On Sun, 2005-07-31 at 23:15 -0400, Matthew Saltzman wrote: > 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. > > 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. Thanks for all the responses, and sorry that I haven't followed up. I kept /etc and /home copying the directories to 2 other partitions that I wasn't going to touch using the "cp -p -r" to ensure I kept the ownerships and permissions. there was nothing really in the /var/spool or other directories that I couldn't live without. due to other issues with the system I reformatted /home and after recreating the user I copied back the required files and directories as the user BEFORE running anything. I first tried it as root dragging and dropping the files but the ownerships and permissions changed, silly me.
