Everyone:
One of you (I don't know who it was) shared with me an excellent method
of making possible a clean reinstallation of Fedora--going above and
beyond the "manual upgrade" described in the Installation Guide, that
amounts to erasing the /root directory but leaving alone all other
directories, not only /home but /usr, /etc, /bin, /tmp, /var, and any
others I might have left out. This method preserves user data on a
physically separate filesystem (an HDD or SSD). But it does not mount
this separate filesystem as /home. The /home directory remains a part of
the main filesystem and gets erased and reinaugurated, just like /usr,
/etc, /var, and all the rest of them.
Rather, one establishes another mount point called /crypt and mounts the
second filesystem at that point. On that filesystem, one creates (as the
SuperUser or as a Wheel member) a separate directory for every user
account. Within each user-account directory, are the directories named
Documents, Pictures, Music, Public, Templates, Videos, and whatever
other directories have you (including bin, which I find indispensible to
my operations). On the original "home directory" of each user, one
erases all these standard directories and sets up symbolic links to the
directories residing on the second filesystem and addressable as
/crypt/UserName/Documents (or Pictures or whatever) (where you replace
"UserName" with the name of a registered user of the system).
The problem I have now: I've forgotten the specific syntax of the mount
command, which I have to use to mount the /crypt filesystem /and make
sure it stays mounted/ between one session and the next. Before I begin
my "clean reinstall" of Fedora 28, I'd like to review the required
commands, especially "mount" and "ln". I also think this method would be
of benefit to anyone here who would like to preserve user data but wants
to make sure that /all/ the directories in the main filesystem get
cleaned up. You see, for several iterations of Fedora, I tried using the
automatic upgrade method. The problem: certain "dirty configuration
statements," for lack of a better term, kept propagating from one
iteration to the next. With the result that Fedora 26 was an inoperable
mess and I was glad to start "clean" with Fedora 27. Of course I also
acquired two Solid State Drives, one 150 GB and one 1 TB, and sought the
best way to use both to support truly "clean" installs.
Whoever you are, let me give a shout-out to you, and ask you to remind
me again what steps to take, and the syntax of the key commands I need.
Or you can check me on this:
The syntax I have worked out for the commands to mount the auxiliary
filesystem as /crypt is:
$ sudo mkdir /crypt
$ sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb2 /crypt
(Here I start with "$ sudo" instead of "#" because to get a "#" prompt I
have to execute "su," and that can be dangerous.)
The syntax for establishing a symlink is even simpler:
ln -s /crypt/UserName/Dir
where UserName is the name of a specific created user, and Dir is
Documents, Pictures, Music, Public, Templates, Videos, and anything else
I want to preserve from one iteration of Fedora to the next. Of course I
have to remove the "hard" directories that Fedora normally sets up
before I execute these link commands.
To whoever invented this method: am I missing anything?
Thank you in advance.
Temlakos
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