upgrade from RH9 to Fedora

[Doncho N. Gunchev]

On Wednesday 05 November 2003 23:11, Mike Lurk wrote:
> From: "Don" <dnrlinux at san.rr.com>
> To: <fedora-test-list at redhat.com>
> Subject: RE: upgrade from RH9 to Fedora
> Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 10:44:22 -0800
> Reply-To: fedora-test-list at redhat.com
>
> Scott,
> I like to do "clean installs" too... I did that when I installed FCT2
> and
> FCT3, and will when FC1 is out as well. Right now I don't care if I
> reformat
> the entire drive... I bought a second drive just for the purpose of
> running
> Linux.... but when Linux starts actually replacing my Windows system, I
> won't have the luxury of simply reformatting the entire disk....
>
> What do you do to preserve the contents of /home and other directories?
>
> I wish there were an option in the install process that allowed
> "everything
> to be wiped out" except for the user stuff.
> I suspect this is easier said that done though because apps might have a
> tendency to put stuff in various directories... like maybe a certain app
> installs fonts it needs.... I might not want those put in the X11
> directory,
> but that might be "convenient" for the app....
>
> _______________________________________________________________
>
> Do what I do, Create a separate partition for the /home directory, then
> you could format the other partitions before installing FC1. That way
> you preserve all your data as well as the other stuff you want to keep
> like downloads.
>
> Mike
>

If you placed your /home and /usr/local in separate partition (as I do,
and Mike did), then you can instruct the installer to format everything
else :) When I add my own stuff in the box, I put it under /usr/local.
If you however have something in /var/named /var/www/ or anything like
these, you'll have to preserve it yourself. I don't see an easy way...

The hard way is when booting RedHat 8/9 and surely Fedora 1 you have a
shell at tty2 press Alt-F2, mount your old system and rm -rf everything
except the data you wish preserved, unmount and then go back installing.
I have /var on separate partition too, but there are things like rpmdb
that have to be removed by hand just to make sure :)

And at last, after installing the new system you can ask rpm (rpm -qf <this>)
what the heel is <this> file or directory, and if there are no bugs it
should be able to answer with the package name. If not, and if you don't
know what this file/dir is doing there, it's at least 99% certain you can
remove it. This way I 'cleaned' my system when I did 'make install' by
mistake... but this is the 'hardest' way I can think of ;)

-- 
Regards,
  Doncho N. Gunchev