Reusing configs on a distro change
I am debating doing a major distro change, from Mint to Red Hat which I realize are very different and my Linux skills are not great. My /home folder is on a separate partition so not worried about that. But I'm wondering how much of my old configuration I may be able to save and reuse. Hoping not to have to set everything up all over again from scratch. Hoping to salvage all the user accounts and privileges (doubtful), samba, and fstab (more optimistic).
I'm assuming (correctly?) this is all under /etc. Realistically, what I can I expect to reuse? Reason for possibly switching is an issue I have been trying to resolve for at least 2 years, unsuccessfully, despite numerous posts (and replies and suggestions) not only on this forum but several others as well. I'm at my wits end. I may have to 😱 go back to Windows. (See my post "Disappearing Music and Video files" under the "Servers" topic) |
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What would the Linux community be loosing if you were to stop using Linux? Quote:
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I've rebuilt many hair pulling home computer systems, at least 90% of them had something in common: The user spent most of their free time at porn sites and the videos they downloaded were loaded with malware. It is now uncommon for downloaded music files to be loaded with malware also. |
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I would back up only the files from /etc that you have modified. It's just my opinion, but I see little reason to back up configuration files which have been left at default.
But that's just me. |
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I took a look again at your post, "Dissapearing music and video files (but no others)" and think that a mismatch between user names and UIDs might be the problem with your music and video files. Two years ago did you do some sort of install that might have left your music and video files with UIDs which do not correspond to their user names? Quote:
This link could help you diagnose the problem if it is UIDs: https://vitux.com/find-uid-ubuntu/ |
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Note: Upon reading back my own post I see it sounds rather inflammatory. My apologies, that was not the intention. Just listing the seven reasons that I KNOW this is not due to a corrupted/malicious music or video file. |
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As for Windows vs. Linux (vs. Android and vs. Smart TVs) I certainly HOPE that's not the problem! Countless Linux servers out there are feeding and receiving files to/from countless Windows clients around the world, and occasionally the other way around (Win => Linux) and have been doing so for many many years. Again note the various file systems including NTFS. So it's very unlikely but I won't rule it out completely and if you have suggestions on how to check, and better yet, FIX that, I'm up for some education. (FYI: Running the chown/chmod script does not correlate or coincide with any drive crashes.) |
Well, I run from sexual opportunities so believe me when I say "I don't do porn" as I'm not into that in any way form or fashion.
I have done digital forensics and there is a definite connection between porn or porn sites and misbehaving or poorly performing computers. Most folks asking for help with these computers try to hide their activities, but can't hide nothing from me. The work I do cleaning them up is free, just helping out friends and family. Based on your other thread, it don't appear hardware related that's for sure. But I have seen this exact behavior, however in your case it is narrowed down to media files where in other cases I have experienced this is with drives containing endless file types. I have seen cases where the missing data was on a separate data drive and reinstalling Windows had those files reappear. Since it's no secret malware is attracted to Windows OS and malware can be designed to be triggered by other events like when a media player is executed etc. Sorry for repeating myself, there is a definite connection between porn, or porn site visits and misbehaving computers. If your looking for malware, look no further. I lost 75% of my backed up data on a separate NTFS formatted data drive not too long ago. The drive was mounted manually with ntfs-3g from a non-Linux unix operating system, I forgot to unmount it before shutdown and that was the straw the broke the Data drive's back. Happened a couple times, then I rigged up a graphical script with whiptail for mounting and unmounting drives that would warn me if there was a drive I mounted manually still mounted when I go to shutdown or reboot. Users could not write to NTFS drives when mounted through fstab, strict policies, but writable if mounted manually as root. For me, that has never happened with Linux and ntfs-3g, but I have not used Linux Mint much which is based on my staple Linux OS Debian. What file system is your media drives using? Might be a NTFS issue. |
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[Clarification] Misconfigurations are the majority of my service calls now, and a few hardware failures. Hijacks would be the majority of the 'infection' issues, which are becoming rarer. But what you fix most would depend on your clientele. We have certainly gotten off topic here... |
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I have NOT been specifically unmounting any of the drives before rebooting (typically because of some config change). Didn't think it was necessary. I DO perform a "proper" shutdown/restart from the system menu. It's on a giant UPS with 12+ hours of runtime, and it monitors the UPS via USB and would do a proper shutdown if the battery became low, which has never happened, IE: it has never lost power. Nor any kind of "crash", "panic", or lockup. Other than the music and video drives it's amazingly stable. I am not aware of any correlation between shutdown/reboots and the lost files and am pretty confident that is not the cause. But if someone here more knowledgeable that me knows otherwise, educate me! |
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Anyway
All I know about RHEL is that it's set up for enterprises and Linux Mint is for kids, (just my way of saying it's focus is to attract new to Linux personal computer users). One is Red Hat based the other Debian. RHEL likely uses strict SELinux policies the other don't implement SELinux. Trying to transfer settings and configurations would likely be a long frustrating journey with some letdowns. There's a lot of threads here by users trying to do that from one version of a distribution to a newer version of the same distribution where the thread drags on for a week or two and the OP eventually goes quiet for a few days, then comes back and says, "I decided to just do a fresh install and configure from scratch, took all night but got it done". So..., time might not be an issue for someone retired but what I always see with these threads regarding moving configs to a different installation is a week or two of frustration versus a good day configuring a fresh install. Many come back saying it turned out better than the previous setup since they learned a few things also. |
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