How to disable filesystem snapshots in SUSE

openSUSE and SLES uses btrfs as it's default filesystem and configured snapper to automatically create filesystem snapshots via cron and whenever you use YaST2 or zypper.

This is very helpful as it provides fallback mechanism in any event of failure but requires additional disk spaces that not everyone could afford. Snapshots will be created even if the disk is almost full in older systems though newer versions of SUSE will automatically disable snapper's automatic snapshots when the root disk or partition is smaller than 16GB. In the case of virtual machines it will quickly fill up the small default disk size that's allocated.

You can free up disk space for your SUSE installation by disabling snapper via any of these methods:

1. Remove snapper plugin for zypper
2. Disable snapper's timeline snapshots
3. Disable YaST snapshots

snapper-zypp-plugin is a snapper plugin for zypper. It will automatically create a system snapshot whenever software packages are installed, removed or updated via zypper. This can be circumvented by removing the plugin via the following command at the terminal:

~> sudo zypper remove --no-confirm snapper-zypp-plugin
Loading repository data...
Warning: No repositories defined. Operating only with the installed resolvables. Nothing can be installed.
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...

The following package is going to be REMOVED:
  snapper-zypp-plugin

1 package to remove.
After the operation, 9.8 KiB will be freed.
Continue? [y/n/v/...? shows all options] (y): y
(1/1) Removing snapper-zypp-plugin-0.8.3-1.1.noarch ..............................[done]

Timeline Snapshots are disk snapshots that are taken on hourly basis with old snapshots deleted based on a policy. This is disabled by default. You can disable timeline snapshot for snapper if it's somehow enabled by following these commands at the terminal:

1. List available available snapper configs.

   > sudo snapper list-configs
   [sudo] password for root: 
   Config | Subvolume
   -------+----------
   root   | /

2. Disable timeline snapshot for specific config.

    ~> sudo snapper --config root set-config "TIMELINE_CREATE=no"

A snapshot is created when configuration changes are made via YaST. This can be disabled via these steps:

1. Open YaST configuration file using your preferred text editor with root permission.

   ~> sudo vi /etc/sysconfig/yast2

2. Search for USE_SNAPPER and set the value to no.

   USE_SNAPPER=no