actually - when I do an operating System backup - there are only 2 things I do backup.
From my Home partition "/home/smurphy" I perform as user root a: tar zcvf backup_etc.tar.gz /etc tar zcvf bac,up_mail.tar.gz /var/spool/mail
This backups the entire /etc directory. All configuration files are held in there - should be.
The other things I do always do. I always create a /usr/local and an /opt partition. These are very important. If I install/compile software on my own - it goes under /usr/local/. If I install a big package using so called install.sh scripts - they always go into /opt .
OK - whjat is very important here is to make sure you remember the partition of the /usr/local /opt and /home partitions. B.e. on my System these are:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hda1 577096 164548 383232 31% / /dev/hda3 3960976 1150992 2809984 30% /home /dev/hda8 8159388 5046008 2698908 66% /opt /dev/hda10 14594836 7120312 6733128 52% /scratch /dev/hda7 489960 62377 402284 14% /tmp /dev/hda2 3960976 2148128 1611636 58% /usr /dev/hda9 4055776 195284 3654464 6% /usr/local /dev/hda6 3083440 172068 2754740 6% /var
Here you see - /home is hda3 /opt is hda8
The etc-Directory - e.g. configuration files - are backuped in the /home directory. Another thing you see here is the /scratch Directory. I usually put all stuff - anything - source-files, mirrors etc. into the /scratch directory.
All Mails of the /var/spool/mail directory are also backed up. The Users - are all in the etc-backup - so that shouldn't be a problem :)
What you need to realize in the process of reinstalling a new operating System - is that you only need to reformat the directories where you do not have "private" data in.
So - what is left ? During install - all you need to do is: 1. Do not repartition your partitions - where data you want to keep relies in ! In my case these are always: /opt /home /scratch /usr/local
2. During Install -
* make sure the installer assigns the partitions to the existing
mount points. Best is to do a hardcopy of it first.
* reformat the partitions the Operating System is in.
In my case:
/
/usr
/var
/tmpI always do a tmp and a var partition. This to prevent filling of /log/* or /tmp/* files to fill the / partition and make the system unusable.
The content of the /home, /opt and /scratch (in my case) will be preserved. So - I'll find all that data in there. Of course - if you are not familiar with all that stuff - make backups on another media before doing so. I do it the "Linus Torvalds" way:
"Backups are for cowards. Post it and the Internet will backup it up for you" :)))
Well, Linus once sent something like this to a newsgroup ;) Was a great laugh I had - but wheh I became more confident with the Systems and knewing what I was doing - i adopted the same way of thinking :) Weird - but I really never lost data since then as I always had to make sure there wouldn't be data losses.
What you need to remember - the etc-backup contains all configuration stuff you had. I would never opt to copy the files over to the new system - using the backup file - if the major-number of the application has changed. If it has not changed - most probably it wouldn't make a big difference. If it has changed - open both fils in Emacs - and adapt.
The /home and /opt directories will held the data/applications you had. Eventually you'll have to create ne entries in the KDE-menus for the apps if they where global (e.g. root had installed these in the KDE-System menus). If it was installed as user - the links are still in your home.
If the KDE-System gets update - always move your .kde and Desktop Directories to a backup location and restore these. e.g.:
cd ~
mkdir Backup
mv .kde* Desktop Backup
<ctrl>-<Alt>-<Back-Space>
Log in again - and the system will recreate you new: .kde and Desktop directories and default configuratons.
Try to reconfigure your system using the KDE-Control-Center.
Applications - that had a configuration files or data file as kmail or organizer, kaddressbook - copy the ~Backup/.kde/share/apps/<application-dir> ~/.kde/share/apps/
~Backup/.kde/share/config/<application-cfgfile> ~/.kde/share/config/
Note that the second line - you should test. Eventually the major release numbers have changed - so you should best reconfigure manually.
For the rest - if a problem occurs - send a Mail to the list ;) There always somewhere here to help ...
Cheers
Joerg
Anne Wilson wrote:
On Wednesday 12 Mar 2003 10:49 pm, Joerg Mertin wrote:
Anne Wilson wrote: However - if you don't intend using that version anymore - just ignore what I said ;) guess it'll be easyer ...
Thanks for all your help, Joerg. One last question, if I may? I hope to soon have 9.1, and would like to avoid the sort of problems I've had this time. I shall reformat the partition that had 8.2 on, and make another partition available for /home. I know that I'l have to make sure fstab isn't trying to mount them, and clean up lilo.conf first. What other precautions should I take?
Anne
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