Thank you again, Israel, it did explain better what you meant, but I would
still like to hear exactly how to do what I want to do at this stage.
First, let me assure you that I am by no means ignorant of matters
software ans OS, having been a user and developer on platforms from the
IBM 704 right through the entire PC revolution. Even programmed some
interesting applications in Forth, where dependencies are
everything...Initially I was not interested in Linux since it was going to
take a long time to be usable by my particular client set of PC users.
However I had repudiated Microsoft because of their unethical approach to
the PC market and used DR-DOS until the pressure for GUIs became too
intense. I transferred to OS/2 with great technical satisfaction and even
some end-user acceptance, until just after the Y2K bug furore, then joined
the M$ herd until Linux more or less came of age. Since then I have been
trying to use it from the "intelligent user" perspective, rather than
becoming a Linux fundi which could be counterproductive in regard to my
efforts to spread Linux, as distinct from Android, usage.
Thus while I could probably sit down for a couple of weeks and RTFM and
become a Linux boff in due course, I don't want to. I'm well past
retirement age at this stage and there are many other things I want to do
with whatever time is left to me. Hopefully Linux will be a continually
more viable tool helping me to accomplish these things, but I want to sit
in my chosen "intelligent user" space, encouraging hopefully many others
to join me. Obviously I need a reference community to whom I can turn with
questions that I am out of my depth on, and that's why I'm on this list.
Now to specifics: My laptop has a 50GB ext4 partition (sda6) with Lubuntu
12.04/14.04.1 installed to some messy degree on it; ~/home occupies 30GB
with 15GB taken by other system folders. There is another, 20GB, ext4
partition (sda7) which I have used at various stages to try out different
distros on. At the moment it has LXDE14.04.1 cleanly on it, hosting a few
applications I cannot do without right now (CUPS, anyone?). I would be
rather happy if you could steer me to some config file (I presume) on sda7
where with a bit of text editing I could redirect ~/home searches to sda6.
Is this exercise likely to be dangerous in terms of data loss? If it is
successful I'll weigh up my options going forward for, e.g. a clean
Lubuntu 14.04.1 install on sda6. I can spare the time for backing up
~/home to an external USB drive, but don't want to have to restore it
after such a clean install, I am already losing too much productive time
on the laptop... If I can just try the exercise of switching the search
partition, I may have learned a very valuable technique for various
situations.
Could you please help me in this? Any helpful comments?
Best regards,
Basil Fernie
On Tue, 09 Sep 2014 22:18:44 +0200, Israel <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Basil,
The idea behind installing /home to a separate partition excludes your
personal documents (Music, photos, Documents, >Videos, etc...) from the
base OS.
All aps are stored in a few general places.... the most pertinent are:
/usr/bin
/opt
as well as the 'system administrator' apps being in:
/usr/sbin
The /usr/share/applications folder gives the Desktop Environment (i.e.
LXDE/Lubuntu)
the information about the app, like Name (in various languages) Icon,
Category and path to the executable... i.e. />usr/bin/some-program
Sharing this folder between other distros is HIGHLY discouraged by most
people. You can however have a partition >that you keep separate to
share between distros, and access it at will.
My point I was making was about things in ~/.config/ and ~/.cache/
There are some configuration files in those folders that occasionally
get messed up in an upgrade. You can move the >entire folder to a
backup (mv ~/.config ~/backup_config && mv ~/.cache ~/backup_cache)
And see if this fixes your issues. You will lose all of your data
(firefox bookmarks, program settings) but you can >(of course) copy
those back from your backup.
If it doesn't fix your issues, you may need to simply backup your /home
directory and reinstall.
If you are very adept and understand dependencies you can use apt's
cache as a backup for your current programs, >though that is often
asking for trouble, so if you are slightly unsure the answer is 'Do not
try this!' :)
NOW,
to set up a fresh install with a separate /home you must do this through
the 'Something Else' option where you choose >what to do when installing
(other options are Replace Lubuntu 14.04, Install alongside, etc...)
The way to partition your disk (assuming you have a regular x86 machine
(32/64 bit))
is very simple.
1. Make a partition that is about 20Gigs and set it to mount at /
2. If you have 2 Gig of Ram make a swap partition at the end of the disk
that is 2 Gig
basically make a swap that is the same size as your Ram... swap is not
as needed these days, but is very useful in >certain circumstances,
there are lots of different opinions about this, but that is a basic
starting point.
3. Use the rest of the disk mounted at /home
You should most likely use ext4 format for your filesystems, though some
people like some of the lesser used ones >(brtfs for example) the
default install uses ext4, so you probably should too unless you
understand what the other >types are and why you want to use them.
I hope that explained what I meant much better
On 09/09/2014 11:36 AM, Basil Fernie wrote:
Hi Israel,
Thanks for the as always considerate response.
1. I tried the sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
although I wonder if this has any more effect than issuing the two
commands separately but consecutively. >>Anyway it downloaded and
installed another 1-2MB of files which might just have been very
recently >>released to the repositories? Whatever, the whole thing
still failed on the sane-utils as before.
There's enough Trusty Tahr floating around to thwart the other sudo
which reports there isn't a new >>release to upgrade to.
Regarding the /home trick, I'm confused. First, does /home contain all
my chosen and explicitly installed >>apps as well as data in eg
Documents and Downloads folders? What about system-tied apps, e.g.
utilities, >>which might be replaced in the new release by proxies not
to my liking? How can I retain those without >>fouling up the new
installation? I seem to recall that updated versions of LibreOffice get
installed in />>opt...
Second, how do I redirect OS searches for /home away from the default
disk to the substitute, POST->>installaion of the new release? (I'm
presuming that if the desirable /home is on sda6 and I am
clean->>installing to sda7, involving formatting of sda7, and I
rediract /home to sda6 DURING the installation, >>the installer is
going to wipe the /home on sda6, if not the whole of sda6, as well as
sda7
Any authoritative responses will be very welcome! I like the /home idea
as it suggests the potential of >>having a variety of Debian-based
distros accessing a common data- and- application base... but, "better
>>safe than sorry"
Basil
--Regards
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