On Fri, 2004-04-16 at 23:46, Marc wrote:
> Well my upgrade to ML 10.0 official was not a total success. It looks like I
> will have to do a clean installation from scratch.
I haven't tried the upgrade option recently but I've had limited success
with it in the past. In a way it's fair enough- there are an enormous
number of packages and making sure that the users' data & the system
settings are still valid (syntactically & semantically) for every one of
those constantly evolving pieces of software is a huge job. Technically
I think it is the responsibility of the software to upgrade the data
structures if they are from a previous version (Evolution does this
well) but generally the non-commercial packages don't seem to. And
guessing at which packages are required is tough. It seems to me it
might be best to take that option out and force people to properly
back-up only the data they need and select the packages they want. These
unsuccessful upgrades don't do a great deal for the image of the distro.
Just my $0.02.
> I would like to do this clean installation without lozeing to much stuff,
> espicially bookmarks in opera, emails in kmail and contact list in kmail. It
> seems like every time I try this I have problems with those things.
The trick is to find the directories, in your home directory, in which
these user-specific settings/data are stored and only move those to the
new set up. For instance opera stores its settings in '.opera', so
backing up this will save your bookmarks. Kmail settings will be in the
'.kde' directory, I'd think. I wouldn't recommend carrying all that
folder forward. Best just to copy the actual kmail folder, which might
be at '/home/bar/.kde/share/apps/kmail/' but I don't use it so don't
really know. Go in and look at the file structure/date stamps/file sizes
and see if this tallies with yr data and latest check of mail.
> I would be thankful for any advice on what to back up or any tips on how to
> make this as painless as possible.
Back up everything, all the time! ;) But seriously, it is worth taking
backups, as regularly as you can afford to loose the data.
Make sure you can get back to the state you're in at the moment if it
all goes pete tong. Although I've recommended moving as few directories
as possible, to keep success rate as high as possible, make sure you
back everything up.
Generally what I do when moving to a new version of mdk is (as root,
clearly- with nobody else logged in):
1) move my home directories to a different place on my home partition.
ie. mv /home/bar/ /home/foo/ .
2) Then I run the install, choose the 'new installation' option (or
whatever it's called!) then, at the partition formatting stage I leave
the home partition deselected. That way it doesn't delete my data.
3) On restart I log in as root, copy (not move- I want to keep the
integrity of my old home dir) the directories I want to salvage to the
new account and change the owner of them, recursively, to the new user
('bar'). (Unless you've got lucky and put yr users back on in the same
order & yr UIDs match from last install.)
4) Profit. Or at least u'll be able to log on & fire up yr apps with all
old data intact.
For apps which don't let you use old setting/data directories there are
ways to salvage the situation. If you have any of those then let us
know.
YMMV- if you're not completely comfortable with what I've just described
then just restore from media. In either case copy yr data onto removable
media before installing. Don't take any risks!
Good luck!
A.
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