ZFS recover-file <...>

[nodswal]

zfs recover-file fstab

Describe the feature would like to see added to OpenZFS

You can edit a file on a data set, sections of the modifed file on disk are kept and placed on a new section of the disk. so the original file still exist on disk, and multiple versions of the file if it is edited multiple times?

If those "versions" can be tracked.

You could then have file level snapshots that were every change of the file, until that section of the disk would get written to again.

you can then do
root@server > # zfs recover-file /etc/fstab
-2025-04-17 17:52:23
-2025-02-08 09:12:31
-2024-12-15 07:11:03

and it would list the versions still on disk.

each file would be like its own github repo, and every change would be like a new push.

Recover different steps of a modify file if it is still on a data set

How will this feature improve OpenZFS?

Allows data recovery for mistakes on a file system

Allows data recovery for mistakes on a file system

Additional context

it may be better to set a flag for a certain directory or file for this kind of action if there is to much overhead on this.

[amotin]

It is called snapshots and exist since ZFS was created.

[cookiEoverdose]

There are scripts and tools out there to facilitate working with snapshots and files (like https://github.com/markusressel/zfs-file-history) but I never used them.