On Tuesday 24 September 2002 09:37 pm, you wrote: > I prefer to find everything on the entire install that I want to keep, > including home, any config stuff and whatever else.. and put the lot in its > own directory... (say /backup) > > Then tar that directory up...: > > tar -zcvvf backup.tar.gz /backup > > and make yourself a nice compressed tar of everything you need... > > then copy that somewhere else.. (off that system or a protected partition) > and reinstall, then uncompress the tar after you have your old user > accounts setup again.. > > that why file ownership doesn't become an issue.. (since tar files preserve > file permissions.)
> Frank Thanks Frank. I've actually installed 8.2 twice now. The second install was after I figured out how to resize my WinXP partiton. I took everything in /home and burned it on a CD, did a fresh install, then replaced eveything in /home with the files on the CD. I can't remember if I did this as root or maybe it was the CD files became "read only" but it was a heck of a mess. I couldn't delete mail in Kmail, configure any settings (the old ones just returned I guess because the files were read only). Half were owned by me and half were owned by root. I did a lot of reading up on chown and chmod before I got it fixed! I'll take your tarball method as a better option. > The conventional advice is to keep /home, and reformat/rewrite the others. > You may end up with some extraneous stuff (but then you're the guy with two > 40 gb drives, too), and some settings might need tweaking, but nothing > horrendous should occur. You will lose any apps that you've added since the > 8.2 install, but that may not be a bad thing, since dependencies and file > locations have been known to change from version to version. Yes Carroll, this is what I'm afraid of. With so little time invested I have very little to loose. I want to avoid having bits and pieces of two versions of Mdk on here. I think the only file I installed that wasn't part of 8.2 to begin with was Everybuddy (the one with Mdk8.2 wouldn't log on to Yahoo chat for me). I may just save some stuff from my /home directory and start with all new. > While you're at it, consider adding a partition that can be used as a > storage > space (mine's called /archives). You can copy your old /home there, do a > completely fresh install, and then just bring back the stuff that's worth This is a good idea if I understand you. If I create an /archive partition, copy anything worth saving there, then during a fresh install /archive is left untouched when I define my usual partitions/mount points during a new install? I guess I would have to mount that partition from a terminal window to copy from it after the install? Thanks all....
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