System Recovery

Get a working system back after a bad update, kernel, or driver — even if it won't boot.

If an update, a new kernel, or a driver leaves your system broken, Genesi's Snapshots let you go back to a working state in a couple of clicks — even when the system no longer boots. This page is the "something went wrong, get me back" guide.

Which situation are you in?

The system still boots (desktop broken, an app misbehaving, a bad change): open the Genesi Snapshots app and Restore a good restore point. Done.
The system won't boot (black screen, kernel panic, login loop): use the GRUB recovery menu below — no terminal, no commands.

Turn the machine off and on. In the GRUB boot menu, choose "Genesi Recovery - My system broke". Inside you'll see every restore point, labelled with its date and type.

Pick a good restore point

Choose one from before things broke — the most recent entry whose type is post or that you created manually. Its system boots read-only (a safe, temporary "preview" — nothing you do here is saved yet).

Restore this system

Once it finishes booting, the Genesi Snapshots app opens by itself showing "You're in Recovery Mode". Click Restore this system, authenticate, and Genesi makes that snapshot your normal, writable system again.

Reboot

Restart normally. You're back on a working system, with your personal files intact.

Pick a post or manual snapshot with the newest date — never a pre. A pre snapshot is frozen just before an update (it's the older state, and it will also miss that update). See the pre/post note in Snapshots.

What a restore brings back

A restore rolls back the whole system subvolume, which includes:

installed programs and libraries (/usr)
system configuration (/etc)
the kernel, initramfs, and boot configuration (/boot)

So a bad kernel, a broken driver, a botched update, or a corrupted system file are all recoverable — and because the boot menu (GRUB) lives on the EFI partition, you can reach a snapshot even if the installed system won't start.

What it does not cover

Snapshots protect against software breakage, not hardware. They live on the same disk, so they are not a backup — a failing disk or damaged filesystem takes the snapshots with it. Keep real backups (another disk or the cloud) for anything important.

Your files in /home are never rolled back — this is on purpose, so a restore never costs you documents. It also means a problem living inside your personal settings won't be reverted by a restore.
A damaged bootloader (the GRUB program itself, not its menu) isn't part of a snapshot. That's rare; if GRUB itself won't load, boot a Genesi live USB and reinstall it. A broken kernel, on the other hand, is covered.

Snapshots — how automatic protection works.
Updates — how Genesi receives updates.