installed 9.04, and my partitions are empty.. where did I go wrong?

[fortyG]

I just installed 9.04, and I followed these instructions
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installseparatehome
hoping to " reinstall all the system files and still preserve your music, bookmarks, and photos." But it seems 9.04 installed right over all that I was hoping to preserve.

Using terminal, "sudo fdisk -l" gives the result:
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00014448

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 4255 34178256 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 4256 9729 43969905 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 9379 9729 2819376 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 4256 9378 41150434+ 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order
I guess that looks right. Does it? I had set up two partitions, / & /home, and there was also a swap partition. If I boot from the cd, there they are on the desktop, two hard drives, both virtually empty.

I don't understand whether I did something wrong, had unrealistic expectations (did I misunderstand the purpose of this process?), or if this just doesn't work sometimes for reasons that aren't my fault. Even if I never recover my data I will feel better if I can find out why this happened.

[raymondh]

I just installed 9.04

If I boot from the cd, there they are on the desktop, two hard drives, both virtually empty.

I don't understand whether I did something wrong, had unrealistic expectations (did I misunderstand the purpose of this process?), or if this just doesn't work sometimes for reasons that aren't my fault. Even if I never recover my data I will feel better if I can find out why this happened.

Sorry.

Prior to creating a separate /home, I am assuming you had a working Ubuntu.

When you installed 9.04 to create a separate /home, did you reformat after selecting mountpoints root and /home? If so, then you overwrote the old Ubuntu effectively erasing your old files as both system and home files were within root.

For future reference and now that you have a /home ..... when you need to re-install root (/), just reformat the root (/). In fact, when that time comes, you also select mountpoint /home but DO NOT REFORMAT /home.

Again, sorry if you have lost files.

[aesis05401]

Just to clarify, you create a separate home partition so that the next time you install/reinstall for any reason you can leave the /home partition alone and all your data will live there without being touched.

If you did not have an existing installation with either a separate /home partition or a separate data partition in general (D: or whatever in Windows) then the process you followed would not have helped you.

Going forward you will now be safe to install/reinstall whatever OS you want so long as you do not overwrite the /home partition you have created.

Out of curiosity, what were you installing over the top of?

[fortyG]

So that's it. It's a preparation for some future installation.

I was installing over 7.04.

What if I'd done this instead?
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/separatehome
Or something like it, anyway. Partitioned the drive before installing 9.04.

[raymondh]

So that's it. It's a preparation for some future installation.

I was installing over 7.04.

What if I'd done this instead?
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/separatehome
Or something like it, anyway. Partitioned the drive before installing 9.04.

Yes.

Again ... am sorry you lost files. Now is the time to reconsider your back-up plans/strategy. Rsync (along with grsync - GUI based) is a good program.

'Safe Ubuntu-ing.

[fortyG]

Yes.

Yes to this
>So that's it. It's a preparation for some future installation.
or yes to this?
>What if I'd done this instead?
>http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/separatehome (http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/separatehome)
>Or something like it, anyway. Partitioned the drive before installing 9.04
Or yes to both?

I am just curious whether the latter could have worked.

I've been planning to buy an external drive because I will soon need to be able to bring data back & forth to work, I guess I will plan to use it for backups too, once I have accumulated some files.

[raymondh]

Yes to this
>So that's it. It's a preparation for some future installation.
or yes to this?
>What if I'd done this instead?
>http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/separatehome (http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/separatehome)
>Or something like it, anyway. Partitioned the drive before installing 9.04
Or yes to both?

I am just curious whether the latter could have worked.

I've been planning to buy an external drive because I will soon need to be able to bring data back & forth to work, I guess I will plan to use it for backups too, once I have accumulated some files.

Yes on the psychocats tutorial. As for pre-partitioning, you would've still lost files when you reformatted because in your previous ubuntu, /home resided within root. Another option would be to do a network upgrade until 9.04 and then do psychocats' tutorial and separate /home. From then on, any reinstall would be just on the root part.

For backup, I have been using a 2-pronged approach (as recommended by another forum friend). I use rysnc to do regular back-ups and, use PING (http://ping.windowsdream.com/ping.html) to create and image of my installation. That way, should I lose rsync, I can still have PING to restore everything (including how I set up Ubuntu). If I lose PING, I can use a liveCD, reinstall and/or recover files from rsync.

[Bartender]

Something else I found out the hard way, and is rarely mentioned.

Let's say you are doing everything right.
You manually created a separate home partition the first time you installed.
Now you're installing a newer version, and you make sure the "Format" button next to the /home partition is NOT checked.

But you decided to give yourself a different username/password.

Big mistake. You'll end up with TWO /home folders, the existing one and a new one inside the / partition.

So, make sure to use the same username/password!

[raymondh]

Something else I found out the hard way, and is rarely mentioned.

Let's say you are doing everything right.
You manually created a separate home partition the first time you installed.
Now you're installing a newer version, and you make sure the "Format" button next to the /home partition is NOT checked.

But you decided to give yourself a different username/password.

Big mistake. You'll end up with TWO /home folders, the existing one and a new one inside the / partition.

So, make sure to use the same username/password!

+ 1 bartender.