How to Install Clean Without Trashing /home or other usable data

[Thomas Taylor]

On Friday 28 October 2005 11:17, Robin Laing wrote:
> Temlakos wrote:
> > In the "Why Fedora?" thread, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> >  > On Fri, 2005-10-28 at 12:21 -0400, David-Paul Niner wrote:
> >  >>   Fortunatly, in the Linux world, upgrading (for me
> >  >>anyway), has always been a matter of nfs mounting a remote /home
> >  >>directory.   Obviously, the same could be achieved with a local drive
> >  >>(and doing thorough backups!).
> >  >
> >  > Yes - that's what I do.
> >  > Not NFS, though - just a separate /home partition.
> >  > I back up my ssl certs etc. - then do a clean install but don't
> >  > format /home
> >
> > That's it? Just don't format /home, but format all other partitions?
> > (Could I perhaps get away without formatting /var/lib, if I break that
> > off as separate? I keep databases and home-built yum repos there.)
> >
> > Can I manage that if I use Logical Volume Management?
> >
> > And once I do that: do I then have to re-establish all user accounts in
> > the order in which I created them to begin with?
>
> As an option, move your home brew stuff to the /home partition/drive
> and then link to it.
>
> A list of critical files would be really nice to rebuild a basic system.
>
> I usually make a copy of my /etc directory when I do a new install.
>
> --
> Robin Laing

Another thing you might consider, in addition to a separate /home partition, 
is to have another partition where you can back up things like a copy of /etc 
(so you can look at what you had for configs), downloaded rpms & programs 
from sites that are not Fedora and anything else you want to save.  As above, 
just make sure that you don't format it.

Tom


-- 
Tom Taylor
Linux user #263467
Federal Way, WA
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