On Mon, Oct 19, 2020 at 05:55:59PM -0500, Hakan E. Duran wrote: > Dear all, > > Having been a linux user for quite a while, I am used to doing a fresh > install every few years, following a few upgrades. I usually set a separate > partition for the /home directory to be able to inherit my settings to the > fresh installation. This is the first time I did an upgrade in OpenBSD from > 6.7 to 6.8, which actually went flawless, but being a skeptical linux user, I > am wondering how I can do a fresh install if need be, by preserving my user > directory. I chose the auto-partitioning during the installation of OpenBSD > 6.7 but I don't know if that would be possible in a scenario like this, since > I am not sure if the installation algorithm would recognize the /home > directory or not. Your guidance will be greatly appreciated. > > Hakan >
You can do a fresh install and preserve existing partitions with great care and NOT using auto partition. Just don't add /home to the partitions to be created and make absolutely sure that the area on the disklabel doesn't include the space allocated for /home. But only if this fresh install is after having done a fresh install previously. Use Custom for the disklabel step, which will reflect the already existing disklabel, except without the mount points. You will need to delete the /home partition, finish the install, then use disklabel to add the home partition, fsck -fp it, and mount it manually. If OK, add to fstab if desired. Be sure to backup the /home partition before doing this. Since this is a bit complicated, practice this many times, read the manual pages very well. Buy a USB drive to practice this on. Be sure to do something wrong. Understanding this will really help you if you somehow have a disaster, like a sudden power failure that messes up a critical partition hopelessly. This is not Linux. The rules are totally different. If you ask yourself what you would do in Linux, you have failed in this task. Auto-partition is really helpful for someone new to OpenBSD. But I rarely partition across only a single disk and always partition some special partitions like /var/postgresql, /home/vip-user, /var/www, etc. /usr/src, /usr/obj are not needed by every user now that we have syspatch. Have fun, Chris Bennett
