The primary reason for XBian using the btrfs filesystem is its automated system for taking snapshots both whenever major system changes are made (such as upgrading the system) and on a scheduled basis. XBian automatically takes a snapshot when apt-get upgrade is run (either from xbian-config or from the console) and takes daily, weekly and monthly snapshots as well.

To manage snapshots, you can easily use xbian-config GUI (Hint: enabling “Advanced Mode” in Preferences gives you additional management functions)

or use the command-line tool btrfs-auto-snapshot

To get a list of all existing snapshots, you just have to run

btrfs-auto-snapshot list [{data | home | modules | root}]

with root privilege. Example:

sudo btrfs-auto-snapshot list root

will list all available snapshots for the root partition. The output will look similar to below

root/@
root/@btrfs-auto-snap_daily-2014-06-04-1905
root/@btrfs-auto-snap_weekly-2014-06-04-1905
root/@last_good_known

In this case there are two snapshots available for root - the daily and the weekly one.

To restore a snapshot, just run

btrfs-auto-snapshot rollback <snapshot>

with root privilege. The changes will take effect after a reboot. Example:

sudo btrfs-auto-snapshot rollback root/@btrfs-auto-snap_daily-2014-06-04-1905
sudo reboot

Removing a snapshot - e.g. for getting more disk space - does work analog to the rollback command. So, you just have to run

btrfs-auto-snapshot destroy <snapshot>

with root privilege. Example:

sudo btrfs-auto-snapshot destroy root/@btrfs-auto-snap_daily-2014-06-04-1905

If you want to remove all existing snapshots at once, just execute: ¹⁾

sudo btrfs-auto-snapshot list | grep -v /@$ | grep auto-snap | xargs -L1 sudo btrfs-auto-snapshot destroy