MX-snapshot stuck at 85% will not complete [Solved]

[twi]

It is stuck at the "sqaushing file system" stage at 85% and has been for at least half an hour. It seemed slower than usual from the very beginning and just kept getting slower and slower. The version is 21.9.01. Oddly, I can actually open the program, as if I am going to create another snapshot. Also there is nothing in the snapshot directory where snapshots are normally saved. So, should I just hit cancel?

Edit:
Actually, there appears to be a folder in tmp called mx-snapshot-XXzdjHS7 that is labeled with that X that indictates that it is in root and it is dated today.

[Adrian]

The version is 21.9.01.

Current version is 22.7, I recommend to upgrade to the latest version. There's no point trying to troubleshoot older versions.

[twi]

I already have the latest version available in 18.3.

And how does that help me stop it? Should I press cancel or what?

[MAYBL8]

I'm not an expert but I have created some snapshots.
I would cancel it.
Go delete the files it created.
Check the disk space where the snapshot is going and try again.
May be a disk space issue.
I also am on MX 21 .
Don't know if 18 had issues.

[Adrian]

18.3 is no longer supported, I think it's better to switch to a newer release.

[twi]

I'm not an expert but I have created some snapshots.
I would cancel it.

Thank you. Actually it wouldn't let me cancel; so, I had to close the window. I guess it really did give up at the compressing stage. The files seem to be all there inside the folder I mentioned. A friend has suggested that I might copy them to a usb and see if it will boot. I may try this tomorrow, but right now I am out of time.

Go delete the files it created.
Check the disk space where the snapshot is going and try again.
May be a disk space issue.

I have over 200Gigs of free space on the drive, but I only have about 4Gigs of ram; so, it is possible it ran out, although this has never happened before.

I also am on MX 21 .
Don't know if 18 had issues.

This is the third snapshot I have done on this machine. I was planning to upgrade to 21.1 but then all sorts of things went wrong (which I am still working on in this thread:
https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=71054 )

[MAYBL8]

personal opinion here after reading all the issues you are having.
I would back up all my files in the home directory including the dot files like .config etc.
Do a fresh install from scratch and then start putting files backed up into the home directory carefully.

[twi]

I would back up all my files in the home directory including the dot files like .config etc. Do a fresh install from scratch and then start putting files backed up into the home directory carefully.

In the end you may be right, but before I do that my plan was to create a snapshot from the current point in time, install it on an old machine and then install the July 11, 2022 snapshot (created before the 'catastrophe') over top on that other machine and see how that goes before proceeding any further.

In the meantime, snapshot problem solved, because as I suspected I simply ran out of RAM because the caches were full.

Chosen solution: clear the caches by following the procedure described below.

Ensure all unecessary applications are closed.

Open a terminal instance and type,

free -h

Hit enter.

This will display the details of your current memory use, etc.

To clear the caches type,

sudo sysctl vm.drop_caches=3

Hit enter.

Type in your password at the password prompt.

Hit enter.

To view the differences between before and after type,

free -h

Hit enter,

and compare this second set of memory statistics displayed to the first above to see the result. If this worked you should see a lot more memory under "free" and "buff/cache," in the after vs. before display.

After applying this solution, I was able to do the snapshot without any further problems.

For more details and more information about caches, caching, obtaining information about how much memory various applications are using, etc., check out this very helpful article, located here:
https://linuxconfig.org/clear-cache-on-linux

-twi

[MAYBL8]

sounds like maybe the devs should consider some of those issues in the code for snapshot and address the memory issues.

[twi]

Perhaps.

Update: Full featured, live USB created successfully from the above-mentioned snapshot, checksums okay, although I don't have time to test it further today, to see if it will boot ok, etc.