apply

Mounts /usr, /etc and /boot of the (new) default snapshot into the currently running system. This is mostly useful for using newly installed packages directly without a reboot. When using apply on a system where existing files will be replaced (e.g. when doing a system update) this behaves similarly to a regular zypper update where files of currently running applications will also be replaced, but with the additional advantage that the update itself was finished successfully as a whole, avoiding inconsistent states on update failures.

Note that - in contrast to regular zypper updates - services will not be restarted automatically. Additionally mounting the three directories is not one atomic operation, so there will be a short timespan where the directories visible to the system will not be in sync.

cleanup

Identical to calling both cleanup-snapshots and cleanup-overlays.

cleanup-snapshots

If the current root filesystem is identical to the active root filesystem (means after a reboot, before transactional-update creates a new snapshot with updates), all old snapshots without a cleanup algorithm get a cleanup algorithm set. This is to make sure, that old snapshots will be deleted by snapper. See the section about cleanup algorithms in snapper(8).

cleanup-overlays

Removes all unreferenced (and thus unused) /etc overlay directories in /var/lib/overlay.

grub.cfg

grub2-mkconfig(8) is called to create a new /boot/grub2/grub.cfg configuration file for the bootloader.

bootloader

Same as grub.cfg, but will also rewrite the bootloader itself.

initrd

A new initrd is created in a snapshot.

kdump

A new initrd for kdump is created in a snapshot. This only has an effect when using fadump, on regular kdump system the initrd will be created during boot automatically.

reboot

Trigger a reboot after updating the system.

Several different reboot methods are supported, configurable via the REBOOT_METHOD configuration option in transactional-update.conf(5). By default rebootmgrd(8) will be used to reboot the system according to the configured policies if the service is running, otherwise systemctl reboot will be called.

run cmd

Execute the command cmd inside a new snapshot and return the command's exit code. If the command returns with a non-zero exit status, the snapshot will be discarded again.

If a non-zero exit status is expected, then the command may either be wrapped inside a Bash script (see the program listing below) or it can be combinded with the --keep option and checking the exit code of transactional-update itself.

Note that a snapshot will be created for each call, so if the command only performs read-only operations it may be worth to combine it with --drop-if-no-change to discard the snapshot again when there are not changes in the snapshot.

This command consumes all the remaining parameters, so should be placed in the last position.

To use features like command lists (e.g. pipes or separators) wrap the script into a Shell command like such as

	  transactional-update run bash -c '
	    ls && date
	    if [ true ]; then
	      echo -n "Hello "
	      echo '\''world'\''
	    fi
	  '
	

setup-fips

Install the FIPS pattern package and configure the kernel command line parameter to activate FIPS mode.

This command can not be combined with any Package Command other than install.

setup-kdump [--crashkernel=low[,high]]

Sets up kdump on the system; if no --crashkernel option is specified then it will use the values determined by kdumptool calibrate, otherwise the values of low and high (numbers in Megabytes) will be used for the corresponding crashkernel kernel parameters, or a static value if only low is specified.

This command can not be combined with any Package Command other than install.

setup-selinux

Sets up a SELinux system: Installs the default SELinux "Targeted policy" and enables it.

This command can not be combined with any Package Command other than install.

shell

Opens a shell to execute commands like zypper manually. After all actions are done, before the snapshot with the changes is unmounted and switched to read-only, a shell is started in the new snapshot as chroot environment for testing and debugging.

rollback [number]

Sets the default root file system. On a read-only system the root file system is set directly using btrfs. On read-write systems snapper(8) rollback is called.

If no snapshot number is given, the current root file system is set as the new default root file system. Otherwise number can either be a snapshot number (as displayed by snapper list) or the word last. last will try to reset to the latest working snapshot.

This command can be combind with the apply command to make the snapshot effective immediately.