systemd Developer Lennart Poettering lennart@poettering.net systemd.snapshot 5 systemd.snapshot systemd snapshot units systemd.snapshot Snapshot units are not configured via unit configuration files. Nonetheless they are named similar to filenames. A unit name whose name ends in .snapshot refers to a dynamic snapshot of the systemd runtime state. Snapshots are not configured on disk but created dynamically via systemctl snapshot (see systemctl8 for details) or an equivalent command. When created they will automatically get dependencies on the currently activated units. They hence act as saved runtime state of the systemd manager. Later on the user may choose to return to the saved state via systemctl isolate. They are hence useful to roll back to a defined state after temporarily starting/stopping services or similar. systemd8, systemctl8, systemd.unit5