Skip to main content

Snapshot Storage (/home and /data)

/home and /data directories are backed up daily and available for up to 28 days in the past.

Seeing All Snapshots​

Snapshots are accessible under a hidden directory .snapshot. You cannot see this directory in the web portal, or through directory listing commands, but you may enter it with the special command cd .snapshot while in the directory containing the desired files.

Example (as of September 11):

[rcsparky@login01:~]$ cd .snapshot
[rcsparky@login01:~/.snapshot]$ ls -1
ScheduleName_duration_2025-08-15_12:00/
ScheduleName_duration_2025-08-16_12:00/
ScheduleName_duration_2025-08-17_12:00/
....
ScheduleName_duration_2025-09-09_12:00/
ScheduleName_duration_2025-09-10_12:00/
ScheduleName_duration_2025-09-11_12:00/

This example is a directory snapshot of precisely the contents of your $HOME directory as of the listed date and time. Files that were modified or even deleted exist here, intact, until they are rotated out after 28 days.

Note, you can enter the snapshot directory listing from any directory within your /home or /data directory.

Seeing All Files in a Snapshot​

If you want to recover a file that existed in $HOME on September 1st at 12:00, you can view it like this:

[rcsparky@login01:~/.snapshot]$ cd ScheduleName_duration_2025-09-01_12\:00/
[rcsparky@login01:~/.snapshot/ScheduleName_duration_2025-09-01_12:00]$ ls -la
total 3254392
drwx------ 25 rcsparky grp_rcadmins       2391 Aug 22 15:22 ./
dr-xr-xr-x  2 root   root                  0 Sep 11 12:00 ../
-rw-------  1 rcsparky grp_rcadmins        322 May 13  2024 .ICEauthority
-rw-------  1 rcsparky grp_rcadmins       1233 Aug 22 15:22 .Xauthority
drwx------  3 rcsparky grp_rcadmins         23 Aug 29  2024 .apptainer/
-rw-------  1 rcsparky grp_rcadmins      66820 Aug 22 15:22 .bash_history
-rwxrwx---  1 rcsparky grp_rcadmins         18 Dec  6  2016 .bash_logout*
-rwxrwx---  1 rcsparky grp_rcadmins        203 Jan 29  2023 .bash_profile*
-rwxr-x---  1 rcsparky grp_rcadmins        770 Jul 28  2022 .bash_prompt*
-rwxrwx---  1 rcsparky grp_rcadmins      10444 Dec  2  2024 .bashrc*
drwxr-x---  9 rcsparky grp_rcadmins        182 Jul 22 11:15 .cache/
-rw-r-----  1 rcsparky grp_rcadmins      30145 Sep 26  2024 .catjot
...

Full Recovery Example​

On February 16, you made a change to a file, or overwrote a file--and you want to reverse this change.

  1. The file shows a recent change, February 16.
[rcsparky:~]$ ls -la submit.sh
-rw------- 1 rcsparky grp_rcadmins 31376 Feb 16 12:10 submit.sh
  1. Enter the hidden .snapshot directory
[rcsparky:~]$ cd .snapshot
  1. List available snapshots within last 28 days:
[rcsparky:~/.snapshot]$ ls -1
ScheduleName_duration_2026-01-20_12:00/
ScheduleName_duration_2026-01-21_12:00/
...
ScheduleName_duration_2026-02-14_12:00/
ScheduleName_duration_2026-02-15_12:00/
ScheduleName_duration_2026-02-16_12:00/
  1. Enter the directory that contains the file for the desired time. This example shows the files given the state of the directory as of noon on February 14th.
[rcsparky:~/.snapshot]$ cd ScheduleName_duration_2026-02-14_12\:00\
[rcsparky:~/.snapshot/ScheduleName_duration_2026-02-14_12:00]$ ls -la submit.sh
-rw------- 1 rcsparky grp_rcadmins 31316 Feb 13 15:52 submit.sh
  1. Copy the desired file from the read-only directory to a writable directory elsewhere:
$ cp -v submit.sh ~/recovered_submit.sh
'submit.sh' -> '/home/rcsparky/recovered_submit.sh'
info

File timestamps shown here indicate the last modification time, not the date of the snapshot.

Scratch Filesystem

Snapshots are not available on the /scratch filessytem, at all. Files overwritten, changed, or otherwise deleted are unrecoverable.