On Sun, 31 Jul 2005, Tony Nelson wrote:
At 8:47 AM -0500 7/31/05, akonstam@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Sun, Jul 31, 2005 at 05:05:09AM -0400, David Niemi wrote:
Finally going to bite the bullet and update my main machine, one
question though.
How will I have to handle existing user directories and information on
the /home partition if I do a fresh install of FC4? What will happen
when during the first run I have to create a user and this user's
directories etc already exists? I am going to back up all the
information to DVD anyway as well as leaving copies on other partitions.
Also, will my raid0 drive (data drive) cause / be a problem?
Back up all the critical directories, /home, /root and maybe /var if
you have mail there, into tar file/ Store the files somewhere where
they can be accessed later (a RW CD maybe). Install the new operating
system. Then untar the tar files using the -k option. This option
does not install files with the same name in the directory. Or untar
the tar file in /tmp and copy files from the old etc, for example,
that you want to retain.
These two re-install methods will do the job.
Also back up /etc. You might need it if settings get munged, to have
something to compare with.
There's probably some other important directories, but I haven't done this
yet myself, so I don't have the benefit of (harsh) experience.
/var/spool/mail if you receive mail on the machine. /var/spool/mqueue if
your outgoing mail queue hasn't been cleared. Possibly some other /var
subdirs, but check them and consider which ones have info about services
you use.
--
Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
