Copy Home from Remaster To New install <Was: How Do You Keep Home>

[Ray2047]

Lately every time I do an install it wipes out the Home file. I choose "Use Existing Partitions and I make sure Home isn't checked on the "Format" screen but it replaces it anyway. Am I doing it correctly?

[T6]

if you created a partition that will store your home folder, the famous but not much used /home partition don't format it when you want to reinstall pclinux or any other distro

if you didn't created a /home partition you only have a / partition containing a folder called home and if you format it, all will be lost

system files and personal files so before doing this load a live cd, backup those files and then format

why are you installing pclinux more than 1 time per year to have this problem?

[marian]

why are you installing pclinux more than 1 time per year to have this problem?

Good question. 
I cant wait for PCLinuxOS64 to do that again. 

Ray2047,
as T6 pointed, the question is whether you have a separate /home partition or not?

[Ray2047]

Mother board problems. I had to replace it then I couldn't boot from the hard drive so reinstalled from a remaster but the remaster was to old to update. So I installed the latest release and as has been the case every time I some how wiped out Home despite it being on a separate partition I did not format. 

I really don't want to rebuild Home again. Any way to copy it from the old remaster?

[T6]

i never could make a remastered version but from the little i know, home folder is not saved because the iso could be too big, in my case home folder is 30 gbs and no dvd will hod that much info

if i understand correctly you have a separated /home partition and installer should respect it without formatting, do you remember what steps do you do when installing?

do you leave system do 2whatever it wants or do you put the partition sizes you want?

better load from a livecd and make backups to another partition or another hard disk before doing more reinstall process

[Ray2047]

Guys I will be following this closely so please hang in there with me but I am too frustrated to make civil replies right now. Please answer me like someone who flunked Linux 101 because that is the way I really feel right now.

[Old-Polack]

Guys I will be following this closely so please hang in there with me but I am too frustrated to make civil replies right now. Please answer me like someone who flunked Linux 101 because that is the way I really feel right now.

Ray, ya done flunked Linux 101.

This is not going to help your present situation much, because you've compounded one error on top of another to the point there's not much to work with, unless you have a copy of the old /home/ray directory somewhere. (Assuming that is the name of your default user.) Hopefully it will help avoid something similar in the future.

In the other thread, you started by saying you reinstalled because you had no luck booting with the new MB. That says nothing about what happened when you did try to boot. That information alone would most likely have been enough to allow us to tell you what steps were needed to reconfigure your existing system to use the new MB without any need to reinstall. Telling us, after the fact of a failed installation, does nothing useful for us or you. The time to ask questions is before making any changes to your installed OS, not after destroying everything on it. Had you done that, we could have told you what to expect, what processes would need to be done, and the order of those processes.

I'm typing this from an installation that was just moved from an old 2002 Compaq, with an AMD 2100+ 32 bit processor to a MB with an AMD 64 x2 5200+ processor. Previous RAM was 2GB DDR, now it's 4GB DDR2. Graphics were built in nVidia GeForce4 on the Compaq, now PCIe slot nViidia GeForce 8600 GT separate card. Ethernet card and sound are built in on both MBs, but different chip sets entirely, this board having gigabit Ethernet, where the old was 100 Mb. While the installation itself is on an external drive that was connected by USB cable on the Compaq, (which had no USB boot capabilities, and only IDE drives internally) it is now connected by eSATA and acts as the boot drive.

The point being, as drastic as the change between these two MBs, all that was needed was a systematic reconfiguration of each item, in the proper order, to have the system working properly on the new hardware setup. The most drastic change was the need for a different initrd image on this machine, so the proper controller modules would be loaded, to see the SATA drives. This was done from a liveCD session.

As for saving the old /home/ray directory on a separate partition, the best way I know to do this is not tell the installer about that partition. When installing to a single / partition, a new /home/ray would be created by you, on first boot. The new /home/ray would be on the / partition itself, so not overwrite the one existing on the separate partition. Only after the new /home/ray is created, as root, you would make an entry in /etc/fstab to mount the separate partition on /home, then reboot. On the second boot, the old /home/ray directory, on the separate partition, would then be used.

[Ray2047]

As for saving the old /home/ray directory on a separate partition, the best way I know to do this is not tell the installer about that partition. When installing to a single / partition, a new /home/ray would be created by you, on first boot. The new /home/ray would be on the / partition itself, so not overwrite the one existing on the separate partition. Only after the new /home/ray is created, as root, you would make an entry in /etc/fstab to mount the separate partition on /home, then reboot. On the second boot, the old /home/ray directory, on the separate partition, would then be used.

Bingo! That actually made sense to me and I think I now have a way to partially solve my problem. See if my logic has holes.

I will reinstall from the 'too old to update" Remaster that has a only slightly out of date Home. Then I will install the current release of PCLOS not assigning the home partition. Then I will go in on the next boot and add that partition in.

Thank you, thank you. In all the time I have been using PCLOS yours is actually the first explanation of how to install with out over writing home I remember reading. People keep saying you can but never how. ....Or I just wasn't listening.

[T6]

from my personal experience, many times i have failed doing something it was my fault, i usually don't listen to others     

anyway if you want to be 100% sure don't leave any files on hard disk, backup first, always