I have learned from experience to always do a fresh install (usually on a new disk drive), and then _selectively_ copy things over from the previous installation (under /mnt). I have had no problems copying /usr/local, after making sure it is empty after a fresh install, but I would never try copying /etc. Almost all of my problems with upgrades in the past have been due to incompatible state in various ~/.* configuration files. I therefore copy them *very* selectively, and prefer to rebuild them when there's not much in them. For something important, like email, I'll look and make sure the file formats and directory structure look identical before copying. The only thing I copy from /etc are some cron scripts. While I expect I could safely copy passwd, group, and hosts, I prefer to review my setup by entering them via the GUI tools. (It's also a chance to familiarize with the latest GUI interfaces.) Julius
