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akand074
April 20th, 2010, 11:10 PM
Hey guys,

The full release of Lucid is going to be released soon and I just wanted to prepare for it soon and I had a few questions.

First, I have /home on a separate partition, and when I do a clean install of Lucid I'll set /home to the same partition without checking the "format" box it so I don't lose anything. Would that cause any problems seeing as I'll have configuration files for applications in Karmic? I don't think it will.

Also I was considering to use this:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8113316&postcount=3

to save all my applications so I don't have to manually run around to reinstall all of them, but wouldn't that be a problem because all my software sources are for Karmic, also would not not save old Karmic applications (ones that came preinstalled in Karmic) that are no longer needed/supported?

Perhaps it will be easier if I just did the clean install and reinstalling everything manually, I just didn't want to lose any of my data in /home by accident but if I don't format that shouldn't be a problem, though I could put all my data from /home onto my external hard drive and then format /home again and just put my data back and start from scratch but that is a lot more work.

Any ideas on what would be the best way to do this?
snowpine
April 21st, 2010, 01:25 AM
First, I have /home on a separate partition, and when I do a clean install of Lucid I'll set /home to the same partition without checking the "format" box it so I don't lose anything. Would that cause any problems seeing as I'll have configuration files for applications in Karmic? I don't think it will.

This is the best and easiest option, in my opinion.

You should have an external backup of your /home at all times, for peace of mind, regardless of whether or not you're upgrading (but especially if you are). :)
akand074
April 21st, 2010, 05:40 PM
This is the best and easiest option, in my opinion.

You should have an external backup of your /home at all times, for peace of mind, regardless of whether or not you're upgrading (but especially if you are). :)

Yeah I'll probably do that. So seeing as my configuration files will be untouched, wouldn't my firefox profile and things like personal screenlet settings remain the same after I reinstall them?
snowpine
April 21st, 2010, 06:39 PM
Yeah I'll probably do that. So seeing as my configuration files will be untouched, wouldn't my firefox profile and things like personal screenlet settings remain the same after I reinstall them?

Exactly, that is the benefit of a separate /home partition. :)
nothingspecial
April 21st, 2010, 07:49 PM
Assuming you have 2 partitions (forget swap, just don`t touch it), one /home and one /

And assuming / is /dev/sda1 and /home is /dev/sda2

When you get to the partitioning bit of the install

Select /dev/sda1 and check the format box, choose to use it as an ext4 file system and choose a mount point of /

Then select /dev/sda2, choose to use it as whatever file system it happens to be (probably ext3 or ext4), choose to mount it as /home

BUT DO NOT CHECK THE FORMAT BOX

Job done.
akand074
April 22nd, 2010, 10:56 PM
Perfect, thanks guys :)
Kom-Si
November 14th, 2010, 03:29 PM
Assuming you have 2 partitions (forget swap, just don`t touch it), one /home and one /

And assuming / is /dev/sda1 and /home is /dev/sda2

When you get to the partitioning bit of the install

Select /dev/sda1 and check the format box, choose to use it as an ext4 file system and choose a mount point of /

Then select /dev/sda2, choose to use it as whatever file system it happens to be (probably ext3 or ext4), choose to mount it as /home

BUT DO NOT CHECK THE FORMAT BOX

Job done.

Hey, I did just that last night re-installing Maverick. And it worked.... mmm... sort of. The system installed, booted, but the only user I could see was my newly created self (during setup process). Then I tried to manually re-create users I had on my /home partition, and again it worked... sort of.

I think that's not right - Ubuntu ought to have picked up user accounts I had on my /home partition, eh?

Any comments on that?
nothingspecial
November 15th, 2010, 08:51 PM
Suggest it

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

The thing to remember is that linux recognises each user by the uid rather than user name.

Ubuntu assigns uids for users from 1000 up, so if you create "bob" when you install, then "bill" then "tom. Their uids will be

bob 1000
bill 1001
tom 1002

If you then create them in a different order on a fresh install, with a seperate /home, things won`t work.