I hate having to "re-invent" all of my settings, passwords, etc., each time I upgrade SUSE. How can I save all my personal settings and etc. before doing a "clean install" from 10.2 to 10.3?

Thank you for any help at all...

Do you have any removable media to save the settings on?

Do you lose/re-create your home directory when upgrading?

Is /home a seperate filesystem (mount point) or a part of the root filesystem (/)?

If /home gets overwritten, then you will probably need to back up a fair bit before the upgrade.

Most files that you might need to re-create / restore (if not in /home) are likely to be in /etc

Therefore you may want to start by:

tar cf /media/usb_disk/my_backup.tar /etc /home

(assumes you have a USB disk mounted on /media/usb_disk and that there is enough storage to complete the tar)

*** This is the minimum I would do before upgrading! ***

Depending on what you have installed and what settings you normally need to change you may need to backup different areas!

to list the contents of a tar file:

tar tf /media/usb_disk/my_backup.tar
(note that the lead / has been removed from the file.

restore a single file from a tar file (to a different place):
This will create two files /media/usb_disk/etc/passwd and /media/usb_disk/etc/shaddow

These can be compared to the existing files or can replace the existing files (be very careful when replacing system files!)

as Disillusionist was suggesting between the lines you should take care of creating a separate /home partition if you are anyway doing a clean install of opensuse 10.3. this has several, mainly 2 advantages:

1. you will not anymore have to backup your /home data files, passwords etc.
2. if the system crashes or you have to reinstall/upgrade for any other reason your /home partition can be just included after install without setting up anything

to your question; it is enough to backup your /home directory by any kind of backup. you just have to restore it after your fresh install