He called us nice!
you won’t be able to solve this with snapshots, containerization for services is a much better approach.
minor point, if you snap a dataset, the snap takes near zero bytes, if you add a gig file, the snap is still 0 bytes, since the snapshot only refers to data that existed at the instant it was taken. Adding or removing subsequent files has no effect on the snapshot. However, deleting or modifying a gig of data that existed at the time of the snapshot will THEN cause the snap to ‘grow in size’ as that deleted or modified data is now only referenced by the snapshot and not the main dataset.
In essence, all a snapshot is, is the system saying "instead of deleting it, I’ll keep this uberblock, and everything it refers to, and not mark anything there free, that’s why they happen so fast.
Thanks. I was mixing snapshot size and actual used space when I was explaining that. You are of course correct.
@maxmoon Read the above and understand it.
Yes, you can install only security updates and have nagios or some other piece of code check that things are not broken. You need to go and read up on basic system administration as soon as possible.
But VirtualBox isn’t the right tool either, if it’s about virtualizing the whole local operating system or even the whole hard drive. At least I thought VirtualBox is to play with other OSs to test something out or to run stuff on OSs you can’t run on your normal machine. I once had Returnil back than I used Windows and it was really useful, because you could have any virus on the machine you would like, but after a reboot everything was clean again. This for a Linux machine with a writable partition to store some permanent data and it would be the best local machine I can imagine 
Oh, come on! It’s like inventing the wheel again. I don’t even code everything I need, because it exists anywhere in some varieties and after asking people, I can use the best variety. Is it really useful to go through all this stuff again? Googling around, finding mostly those forums which are high rated, but are just crap… nowadays you can’t find good stuff by googling it.
Do you talk about docker and similar things? I thought containers are only containing specific applications and it is possible to change everything within a container and that it is just a specific configured installation of something. But is it really possible to have a fresh OS if I boot up my computer. Is it possible to apply changes if I don’t want to loose them sometimes? There are exceptions, which should be permanent.
Isn’t Nagios a little bit overpowered for a private server? If I really need to read about basic system administration, then I would be very thankful if you recommend something or a way which is more efficient than the way I’ve already gone the last years. Because in your eyes I did something wrong, if I need basic system administration skills. But maybe you meant advanced or expert administration skills 
I did and you guys are! 
Um. How do you think the people you are asking learned how to answer?
That depends on how good, or how crap, your googling skills are. it’s not like the good information has disappeared.
I saw “want’s” (with an apostrophe) and I stopped reading.
First post was really the best place to stop reading this abomination.
Just to get you started you can follow any of the links there. For books, click here or O’Really media. Any OS you use will have a ton of documentation about how to do things, for exmaple the stunningly good FreeBSD one. Just google the rest…
There is no advanced or expert administration skills, just basic ones. Advanced comes from knowing a ton of tools that can be used but if you know one, that’s generally enough. For example, you could use the silver searcher or you know, just use grep… Expert comes from doing this shit for ten years or more and learning to hate all OSes for being broken in one aspect or the other while liking some other aspect.
We assume here that anyone posting will have a good knowledge of system administration so tend to be impatient with those that do not. We’re arseholes like that. 
Maybe you should just start knowing things, instead of just thinking about them.
Not by reinventing the wheel. And it’s not like I am asking to reinvent some math formulas. Were are just internet links.
Your parents must be proud of you that you are bullying people in the Internet, because their third language is English. You get a slow clap for this achievement claps3TimesSlowly. Just want to ask you something without any special reason, but are you American?
And that’s the reason I ask people for specific books, forums, web sites, etc. In 2018 there are too much information. Reading and filtering every information costs too much time. And it isn’t guaranteed it contains good explained or even right stuff. I could read Amazon ratings about a specific topic for weeks and could find a book, which covers almost all the stuff I asked for or I just ask people who already know this stuff and can recommend the right book within seconds.
So, why is it so hard to get specific information in 2018 from other people? I mean, they load up almost all private data about their lives to a lot of data collectors, but if you ask them for a simple thing, like a link, they like “Go study Computer Engineering, reinvent the wheel, but you don’t get data from me…”
If I would like to have terrible life advice, I would ask people on 9gag and I am sure I can find you there, too. But just think about for what I am here, in this forum? Got it?
You must be new here.
E: concerning 9gag, don’t presume to know anything about me!
Yes, I am new here and I don’t know anything about you, like any other random guy in the internet. But going back to your wise words: How to get this knowledge in the most efficient way we were talking about, in your opinion?
i think this thread has run its course
Yep, an admin should close it, because this leads to nothing useful.