uninstall 12.04 after installing 14.04

[kirkcudbright]

i wish to install 14.04 but to install as duel boot with my existing 12.04 for a trial period.
will i be able to then uninstall 12.04 without loosing any apps and files

[ajgreeny]

The simple answer is, yes, it is possible to do it.
How easy that will be depends on your current partition layout.
Do you have a separate /home partition? Let's see the output of sudo fdisk -l in terminal please.

[kirkcudbright]

hi
Disk /dev/sda: 82.3 GB, 82348277760 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10011 cylinders, total 160836480 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000960e9

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 159807487 79902720 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 159809534 160835583 513025 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 159809536 160835583 513024 82 Linux swap / Solaris
root@terry-desktop:/home/terry2#


is that ok

terry

[kansasnoob]

Also post the output of:


df -H

and:


free -m

[kirkcudbright]

terry2@terry-desktop:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 76G 39G 33G 54% /
udev 1.9G 4.0K 1.9G 1% /dev
tmpfs 375M 1.2M 374M 1% /run
none 5.0M 8.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
none 1.9G 300K 1.9G 1% /run/shm
/dev/sdc1 30G 12G 18G 39% /media/linuxback
terry2@terry-desktop:~$


terry2@terry-desktop:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3745 3370 375 0 227 2235
-/+ buffers/cache: 906 2839
Swap: 500 0 500
terry2@terry-desktop:~$

[kansasnoob]

terry2@terry-desktop:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 76G 39G 33G 54% /
udev 1.9G 4.0K 1.9G 1% /dev
tmpfs 375M 1.2M 374M 1% /run
none 5.0M 8.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
none 1.9G 300K 1.9G 1% /run/shm
/dev/sdc1 30G 12G 18G 39% /media/linuxback
terry2@terry-desktop:~$


terry2@terry-desktop:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3745 3370 375 0 227 2235
-/+ buffers/cache: 906 2839
Swap: 500 0 500
terry2@terry-desktop:~$

I was curious about why such a small amount of swap but I see you have 4 GB of RAM so you probably seldom use swap anyway.

But df -h (I asked for df -H) shows that your Ubuntu root partition is over 50% (exactly 54%) used which makes things slightly more complicated. I typically like to keep total partition usage below 80% just to be on the safe side, but if you could reduce the amount of space used below 40% then you could shrink sda1 to about 1/2 of it's current size and create a new primary partition (sda2) using Gparted from the 14.04 live disc.

Like here's an 80 GB disc I used for testing an upgrade yesterday:

255224

So I can right-click that existing partition and select Resize/Move:

255225

Then shrink it by about 1/2:

255226

Then right-click the new empty space and create a new partition:

255227

Then simply click on the green checkmark to apply and you'll end up with a new partition (that operation may take quite a long time and must not be interrupted):

255228

Then when you install you can select Something Else as the installation type and be sure to select the newly created partition (/dev/sdb3 in that example) for root "/". Then you'll have a dual boot. Then you can later delete the original 12.04 root partition after everything is setup, data transferred, etc - and then resize the 14.04 partition to use that free space.

I must however warn that there is always a risk of data loss involved with any repartitioning or installation so backup everything of importance! The data you don't backup is always the data you'll lose!

[kirkcudbright]

hi
thanks for info
i will give it a go
i have already done a full backup

terry