lnoland
December 5th, 2010, 09:43 AM
I had one of my Linux boxes suddenly start failing -- it would go to blackscreen the minute the window manager loaded, and apparently then took a trip to La-La land -- the network connection would sever, sometimes it would reboot, sometimes it would just sit there completely inaccessible. I don't think the problem was one of configuration because I had made no recent configuration changes (I hadn't even loaded any updates for at least a week). Whether it was a configuration problem before, it may have one now -- I have been trying everything imaginable to get it working again including adding and removing packages, reinstalling packages, etc. It still isn't working and I'm ready to throw in the towel -- I am going to reload from scratch.
I am currently on 9.10 so I planned to load 10.10. I would like to use the trick of saving my home partition, backing up a list of my packages, copying /etc (and perhaps /var and /usr -- I'm never clear on what's best here) and using those to get back my old configurattion. The problem is, at least some things in my old configuration are not healthy. Foolishly, I haven't done a backup in a long time so the backup is no help. Since the problem appears to be with either X-windows or the window manager, I thought perhaps I could selectively restore my configuration, if I can just figure out what to include and what not to include. Would anyone have any ideas on how to do that?
I thought perhaps, if I were to uninstall with the purge option anything having to do with X or the windowing environment (in this case, XFCE) perhaps that would clean out any configuration problems in the current setup and I could load the new system and do some kind of merge of settings between the old and new. Does this seem plausible? Has anyone attempted anything like this? I just hate to think of how long it took me to get everything set up and configured the first time -- I really don't want to repeat that (I know -- I hsould have done regular backups).
thanks for any help you can offer.
- Les
I am currently on 9.10 so I planned to load 10.10. I would like to use the trick of saving my home partition, backing up a list of my packages, copying /etc (and perhaps /var and /usr -- I'm never clear on what's best here) and using those to get back my old configurattion. The problem is, at least some things in my old configuration are not healthy. Foolishly, I haven't done a backup in a long time so the backup is no help. Since the problem appears to be with either X-windows or the window manager, I thought perhaps I could selectively restore my configuration, if I can just figure out what to include and what not to include. Would anyone have any ideas on how to do that?
I thought perhaps, if I were to uninstall with the purge option anything having to do with X or the windowing environment (in this case, XFCE) perhaps that would clean out any configuration problems in the current setup and I could load the new system and do some kind of merge of settings between the old and new. Does this seem plausible? Has anyone attempted anything like this? I just hate to think of how long it took me to get everything set up and configured the first time -- I really don't want to repeat that (I know -- I hsould have done regular backups).
thanks for any help you can offer.
- Les