Update Manager and Package Manager Error

[sotiris2]

I wrote all this and then I saw you have a boot partition sda3 which may be unnecessary so if you'd like before you check the rest can you post me the output of

sudo parted -l

?


Ok since it isn't mounted it means it' not in a different partition and we will have to save it. First let's find out how big your home folder is. Open your home folder and go up a level (ALT+UP arrow). You should see your folder as an icon (of a home ) with your name. Right click on it and select properties. Wait for it to finish counting and check its size.

Now you have the following options.
Copy everything to an external media (hard drive) and after reinstalling ubuntu copying them back.
Or do some partitioning and saving them to a new partition on the same drive. That requires a bit more effort on your side and also your home folder to be smaller than the free space on the disk (since we will COPY it not move it.) In both cases I would copy them back to a distinct /home partition so that you can easily reinstall the os without losing your configurations and files in the future.


Note that both procedures take time. If you decide that you don't mind not keeping some large files because you also have them elsewhere you could delete them now and spare yourself some time.

COPY TO SAME DRIVE.
If you want to not use an external disk then you will have to resize your partition. To be honest to shrink it to make free space on the disk. We can't do so from your installed system (can't shrink itself) so we will do so from a live cd. Since you want to installl 14.04 go ahead and make an installation media (either dvd or [url=https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick]usb) and boot it up. But instead of selecting "Install Ubuntu Now" , select Try Ubuntu, and you will have a ubuntu system without installing. Then you can run Gparted (it's included on the live cd/usb) and follow the guide above on resizing.I 'm not sure how much space you have but the main / partition of ubuntu doesn't need more than say 30-40gb (and that's probably overkill) so you can push it that low. After its done (and you will NOT interrupt it) you can make a new partition on the unallocated space. Choose ext4 filesystem. Remember its size and name sdax where x will be a number, and maybe give it a label.

Then we 'll copy your home folder to the new partition. There is a guide here but it requires you to reboot to your old system. You also shouldn't bother with sections related to fstab or moving home to old since you will be reinstalling.

If you don't want to reboot, follow on.
Since we are on the live media opening home as you used to will show nothing. But at the bottom of the launcher you 'll have some hard-disk icons. One of them will be your installed system which will contain a folder name home and one of them will be empty. Do not copy the /home folder to the empty partition. Rather enter the home folder and copy the folder name after you. Paste it to the new partitions. After it's done check it's size and importantly check permissions tab. It must be the username you had (and will have) and not something else.

INSTALL
Now you can reinstall ubuntu. It is important however that you do the following things:
Select manual/custom partitioning and not install ubuntu alon or install ubuntu alongside. MANUAL.
You will get a list of paritions. Find the one you created and click on change. Select use as ext4 filesystem and mount on /home. Doublecheck format is NOT selected.
Select your old partition and set it to be mounted on /. For this partition select Format. Now continue with install. It's important that you pick the exact same username and password as you had. Otherwise you may face problems.

Now after you install you won't have your programs, say your bitorrent client. But after you install them, they won't be like brand new but already configured as you left them. Your bittorrent client will be configured as it was and it will even have your torrents as you left em.

EDIT: If you want to use an external drive just copy your home folder to your external drive.Unplug that drive. Then install ubuntu with manual partitioning and delete every partition. Then add a 30-40GB ext4 partition to be used as / , a couple gb swap partition (equal to your ram if it's a laptop and you want hibernate) , and the rest as an ext4 partition to be used as home. Install normally and boot to your new system. Copy everything (press ctrl +H to show hidden files, they start with a . and are what contains your configurations) to your new home folder. DO NOT REBOOT before running

sudo chown -R user:user ~/user

where user is your username. Do not run it with user, you will need another reinstall.

[FRKiran]

I wrote all this and then I saw you have a boot partition sda3 which may be unnecessary so if you'd like before you check the rest can you post me the output of

sudo parted -l

?

The output is:

Model: ATA Hitachi HTS54757 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 750GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End    Size    Type      File system     Flags
 1      1049kB  368MB  367MB   primary   ntfs            boot
 2      368MB   269GB  268GB   primary   ntfs
 3      269GB   269GB  367MB   primary   ext4
 4      269GB   750GB  481GB   extended
 5      269GB   484GB  215GB   logical   ntfs
 6      484GB   645GB  161GB   logical   ntfs
 7      645GB   742GB  96.7GB  logical   ext4
 8      742GB   750GB  8513MB  logical   linux-swap(v1)


Model: WD My Passport 07A8 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  1000GB  1000GB  primary  ntfs


Model: Multiple Card Reader (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 4073MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      32.3kB  4073MB  4073MB  primary  fat32        boot

Which I do not know the meaning.

And my home have the volum of 16.8 GB now.

[sotiris2]

Do you have an external hard drive or usb stick of that size? Or are you willing to ditch some files? Do you also have a windows installation?

[FRKiran]

Yes I have an external usb device with enough space to save my home folder to. I am willing to get rid of some files. For examplie there is a file named '.texlive2012' highlighted with blue which seems to be connected to the 'texlive' I installed manually. I do not intend to reinstall that after chaging my system. This is the only thing in my home that I do not like. Any way is there a way I can understand which file was added after installing ubuntu and because of installing new programs? Something that helps me chose files I should keep, files I can keep, and files I can happily delet because I will reinstall their program anymore.
I also have a Windows .

[sotiris2]

Other by name no not really. But you can omit .cache.
Now if you have backed up your home folder you can go on ahead and reinstall ubuntu. I would reccomend that you make a distinct /home partition this time though. To do so select manual partitioning/try something else in the installer.

You will get a list of partitions. Do not touch anything that is of type ntfs (sda1,2,5,6).
Delete partition sda7 of type ext4. In its place create two different partitions both ext4 with sizes 30gb for one and the rest for the other. Select the 25gb partition and have it be mounted on /. Have the other to be mounted on /home. Delete sda3 in my opinion since you don't need a /boot partition and can only cause you problems if it fill up (later you can extend the windows partition to cover the extra 300mb but only do so in windows operating system, not from ubuntu or install disk). Continue install as normal, pick your username (you can pick new).

Reboot to your new system. and copy back your home folder's contents to your new home folder. Make sure you include hidden files (starting with .) After it is done DO NOT REBOOT/LOGOUT before you run this.

sudo chown -R user:user /home/user

where user is your username. it will ask for your password, type it and press enter even though it won't show anything on screen like **** or ### . Check via right click properties that you are the owner of all files and folders before you reboot/shutdown/logout. Then reinstall any programs you had and when you run them it should be like you didn't even reinstall.

[kc1di]

I would be more selective about copying back your entire home folder. there are some hidden config files you do not want on the new install They will need to be replaced by newer ones on the new install. and if you copy them they may conflict of overwrite newer ones so be careful with that.

Good Luck

[FRKiran]

I would be more selective about copying back your entire home folder. there are some hidden config files you do not want on the new install They will need to be replaced by newer ones on the new install. and if you copy them they may conflict of overwrite newer ones so be careful with that.

Good Luck

1) What config files exactlty? How should I chose the files I need to keep and the ones I need to throw away?
2) also, When I tried to copy my home, opening nautilus window through 'gksudo nautilus' command, there was some files could not be copied.
the massage was: some error occurred while copying ....' and the name instead of '....' were :"ifac_socket" and "command_socket".
Is this normal. Would it be OK if I continue without this files.( I just skipped these files)

3) In fact from the piles of programs I have now, I am only intrested in my torrent files and torrent client. Please lokk at this foder and it's contents:

usr@usr:~$ ls .config/transmission/
blocklists  dht.dat  resume  settings.json  stats.json  torrents

Is it OK if I keep only this file from my home and copy it back after installing 14.04. I used this page to locate tansmission files.
Thank you

[kc1di]

Hi again,

I would only restore my personal files. bookmarks , Documents , pictures stuff like that. most of the config files are hidden any way and I would not restore most of them because it may create conflicts with newer versions of the same file if you restore them you would be in effect overwriting the newer file.
The transmission files may be ok, but I've never tried it so not sure about that one.
I for instance use Chrome Browser and it has the ability to sync all my bookmarks and other chrome settings because it has cloud storage. I believe FireFox has something similar. I also use Dropbox or other cloud storage and export important e-mails documents there - they are easily restored when new install is complete. Just my 2 cents worth

[sotiris2]

Yes you can keep only these files. If you want to keep more configuration files but not have potential problems, you could chose try ubuntu , and use gparted to create the partitions before installing and copying your home folder to the one that you will select to be mounted as home. Note that the partition should have a folder with your username and not a folder named home or all your subfolders (such as documents and .transmision).

Then you will install the os and pick it to use this partition as home and you will NOT select to format it. If some config files must be changed for ubuntu to work they will be. But not essential program configurations (such as transmission ,firefox etc) will be left alone. I've personally upgraded via reinstalling this way from 10.10=>14.04 skipping maybe 4 versions at most with no issues. kc1di is right though that the way i described in the previous post could result is some problems. While its a bit of a hassle now, it will make system reinstallations (or upgrades via installing a new version which seems to work much better) much more easier in the future.

EDIT: Whatever you do make sure you have correct owner for the files you put back.

[kc1di]

Yes you can keep only these files. If you want to keep more configuration files but not have potential problems, you could chose try ubuntu , and use gparted to create the partitions before installing and copying your home folder to the one that you will select to be mounted as home. Note that the partition should have a folder with your username and not a folder named home or all your subfolders (such as documents and .transmision).

Then you will install the os and pick it to use this partition as home and you will NOT select to format it. If some config files must be changed for ubuntu to work they will be. But not essential program configurations (such as transmission ,firefox etc) will be left alone. I've personally upgraded via reinstalling this way from 10.10=>14.04 skipping maybe 4 versions at most with no issues. kc1di is right though that the way i described in the previous post could result is some problems. While its a bit of a hassle now, it will make system reinstallations (or upgrades via installing a new version which seems to work much better) much more easier in the future.

EDIT: Whatever you do make sure you have correct owner for the files you put back.

+1