Snapshots

A snapshot captures the entire VM state at a point in time — memory, CPU registers, disk, running processes, open file descriptors, network connections. Resume restores all of it, exactly. The new sandbox picks up where the original left off.

Command	Description
bhatti snapshot create	Checkpoint a running sandbox.
bhatti snapshot list	List your snapshots.
bhatti snapshot resume	Resume from a snapshot into a new sandbox.
bhatti snapshot delete	Delete a snapshot.

How is this different from bhatti stop?

bhatti stop snapshots the current sandbox to disk and freezes it; bhatti start resumes that same sandbox. The sandbox doesn’t go away — it’s just paused.

bhatti snapshot create saves a named copy of the VM state. The original sandbox keeps running. bhatti snapshot resume later creates a new sandbox from that state, with a new name and new IP. You can resume from the same snapshot multiple times to stamp out copies.

	stop/start	snapshot
Original sandbox affected?	Yes — paused	No — keeps running
Result of resume	Same sandbox awake	A new sandbox
Multiple uses?	Once (it pairs with the stop)	Many — fork as often as you want
Captures volumes?	No (volumes are detached)	No (rootfs + memory only)

Quick patterns

# Checkpoint before a risky experiment
bhatti snapshot create dev --name dev-pre-experiment

# Fork: same VM state, multiple copies
bhatti snapshot resume dev-pre-experiment --name copy-1
bhatti snapshot resume dev-pre-experiment --name copy-2

# Clean up
bhatti snapshot delete dev-pre-experiment -y

What’s not in a snapshot

• Persistent volumes. Snapshots only capture the rootfs and memory; volumes are detached when you resume into a new sandbox. Re-attach them on the resumed sandbox if you need them.
• External state. TCP connections to other hosts may be in an awkward state on resume — kernel state is preserved, but the remote peer doesn’t know the sandbox stopped and resumed.