On Wednesday 07 Jan 2004 4:13 pm, Tango Echo wrote: > Hi all, > > I've recently decided to take the plunge and use 9.2 > as my base OS. I'm performing a clean install on a > brand new hard drive. My old mdk 9.1 install still > resides on two old hard disks. My question is this: > > Is there a simple way to restore my data from 9.1? > The main apps that need to be restored are GAIM, > Evolution, and Kmail. While I do need the info back > from them, I DO NOT want to over write system files > since 9.2 has newer packages installed. I've heard > some people just copy the old folder back (so I'd copy > my old Tango directory to over write my current Tango > directory). That would over write the sys files IMO. > I know Mandrake has a backup/restore utility too, but > I'm not sure if that applies here. > > Lastly, if no solution is available, why not? It > would seem simple enough to me. Just make a program > or bash script that copies all the data files (not > system files) to another hard drive or cd, then run it > again to restore them. I'm sure many of you must go > thru this at the rate we upgrade. This is the biggest > pain of the upgrade procedure IMO. Tweaking my eye > candy in the new version, etc is no big deal, it's > trying to remember what files go where > w/backup/restore, etc..... > > Any ideas here? > The only places where configuration is held is in /etc for system configuration and in your home directory for user configuration.
So for example to have the same samba configuration in your new set up copy the old contents into /etc/samba To get your user setting for gaim back just copy the contents of ~/.gaim back into your home. (Note files beginning with '.' are hidden) Many of us get around the issue by keeping /home on a separate partition, and then simply not formatting that partition when doing a new install. All your configurations and user files are therefore preserved. One work of warning though. All files in Linux have a UID (User Ident Number) and GID (Group Ident Number) It is vital for your users to have the same UID/GID numbers between installs or else you would end up not owning your own files. The simple way around the issue is to always add your users in the same order when you install. The first user is UID 501 the second is 502 etc. (This gets a bit complicated if you use Userdrake to add users because it will start adding users with a UID of 500) BTW: If you use drakbackup to back up your system it will save the users home directories and the contents of /etc which you can then use to set up a new install. derek -- ---------------------------------- www.jennings.homelinux.net http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org
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