--- title: "First Time the ZFS Saved Me" categories: - blog abstract: Automatic snapshot saved me from a full system reinstalation date: 2023-03-18T06:04:33+01:00 year: 2023 draft: false --- {{}} As I was recently trying to [enable auto-switching audio to headphones](/2023/switching-between-speakers-and-headphones-on-freebsd/), I borked my FreeBSD installation. Somehow the speakers stopped working, and the headphone output added a loud hiss. Unfortunately, I was unable to fix it. My first thought was to reinstall the system, but then I remembered that I've read about [ZFS Snapshots](https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/819-5461/gbcya/index.html). ``` zfs list -t snapshot ``` revealed that FreeBSD has already created a few of those recently. I knew this OS and ZFS go hand in hand, but I was still pleasantly surprised. To return the system to a previous version, all I had to do was ``` zfs snapshot ``` and my system stopped responding. I was in X, so that's entirely on one. But the rollback was so instantaneous that my first thought was that something fried. After a good, old hard reset, everything worked as it was a few days ago. ZFS very well may be my new best friend.