LSS shares take temporary snapshots which retain the share's files, folders and permissions exactly as they existed at the moment the snapshot was taken. It can be helpful to access a snapshot to view a previous version of a file or to restore recently deleted data.
Snapshots are stored in the .zfs/snapshot directory at the base level of the share. The .zfs directory does not appear in directory listings, so you must navigate there explicitly in order to view the snapshots.
- Open Explorer and make sure that the address bar is visible (which shows the current directory path).
If the address bar is not visible, select the "View" menu > "Toolbars" > "Address Bar".
- Navigate to the base of the share, i.e., the drive letter where you mapped the share.
- Add
\.zfs\snapshotto the end of the path in the address bar and then press Enter.
The snapshots appear as folders in Explorer. Most snapshots are named according to the date and time the snapshot was taken.
Note: In general, the "Time" or "Date Modified" of each snapshot folder is not the time the snapshot itself was taken. Rather, this is the time when the share's top-level folder was last modified as of the moment the snapshot was taken.
Windows has a built-in feature which uses snapshots to let you view previous versions of files and folders directly in the file explorer without navigating through snapshots as directories.
- Right-click on a file or folder inside an LSS share and select "Properties".
- Select the "Previous Versions" tab.
- To view a previous version, select the version from the list and then click "View". You can also save data to a different location or restore a previous version by using the "Copy" and "Restore" buttons.
Note: This is the same method used to view Windows VSS point in time snapshots from your client.
The .zfs/snapshot directory is hidden, but you can access it in a normal Finder window using Finder's "Go to Folder..." command.
- In Finder, navigate to the base of the share.
- In the "Go" menu, select "Go to Folder" (or use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Cmd+G) and enter
.zfs/snapshot. - The snapshots appear as directories in Finder named based on when the snapshot was taken.
Note: In general, the "Time" or "Date Modified" of each snapshot folder is not the time the snapshot itself was taken. Rather, this is the time when the share's top-level folder was last modified as of the moment the snapshot was taken.
At the command line (or in a script), simply access the snapshot directory as you would any normal directory. For example:
ls /Volumes/sharename/.zfs/snapshot/
This option requires that you have the share mounted directly on your system. Specifically, it won't work if you mounted the share using your graphical file browser (in Gnome or KDE, for example). All HPC nodes satisfy this requirement, so you can simply access the snapshot directory as you would any normal directory.
In the case of a Shared or Dedicated share on an HPC node: ls /Shared/sharename/.zfs/snapshot/ or: ls /Dedicated/sharename/.zfs/snapshot/
Snapshots of your HPC home are available in the same way: ls ~/.zfs/snapshot/
If you mounted your share on your workstation using a graphical file browser, you should be able to navigate to the snapshot directory by adding ".zfs/snapshot" to the end of the share's path in the browser's navigation bar.
Note that if the share was mounted directly on the system instead of using a graphical interface (for example, in your Fast-X connection to a login node), the path is the same one you would use on the command line.