KDE4 and re-using kde3.5 user areas

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Sat, 2008-05-24 at 20:46 +0000, Mike wrote:
> Although I am currently running KDE4.04 on F9 in which I allowed the user
> area to be created from scratch during install (or using useradd) after
> the install, I have a question as part of advance planning for when I 
> upgrade other systems which have pre-existing user areas in F8.
> 
> Does anyone have any experience in installing F9, and then copying back
> pre-existing user directories from their original F8 files.

By "user area" I assume you mean home directories. The answer is yes,
that's basically what you do and it basically works. In fact I can't
think of any other way to do it that wouldn't involve immense tedium.

> What I mean by this is that the F9 install is done without creating
> any users apart from root.  Then the appropriate user lines are added
> back into passwd, group, shadow and gshadow in /etc and then the 
> pre-existing files from /home/user1 /home/user2 and so on are copied
> back into /home from backup. If this is done and then one of these users
> logs in to KDE4.x using only pre-existing files that were from KDE3.5
> in the earlier system, then 
> a) will the user be able to successfully login to KDE4.0x?

Yes.

> b) if the user can login will there be any nasty consequences from
> the fact that the kde config files relate to the previous 3.5 files?

I haven't seen any so far, but of course YMMV.

poc