Keeping /home partition with new installation
 

I am going to install Mandrake 10.1 Official later on today. It's possible for me to keep my /home partition, correct? I just need to make a new / and a swap partition, correct?

Basically I just want to install the new Mandrake 10.1 and keep my /home partition since it has pictures and documents I have. Don't worry, I backed it all up just in case. :) I would like to avoid copying everything back, though.

Yep just don't create a new /home directory and make sure you choose the proper partitions. I don't know if it'll manage automatically but you might have to edit /etc/fstab after the install to include your /home partition, it's not hard though.

That shouldn't be a problem. One problem you could have is with file permissions. If the user you use in Mandrake does not have the same UID as the user on the previous distribution, then it will look like you don't own the files on the home directory. I would make sure when I create the new user in Mandrake, the same UID and GID would be used.

I probably would not tell Mandrake about the older /home when it installed. I'd let it create a /home on the / and then after the install, changed the /etc/fstab file to mount the older /home. You may have to move some files around because some packages like samba and ftpd may have created directories in /home.

Thanks for the help, people! :) Looks simple enough and I will install and let you know how the transfer goes.

The installation went successful, but it didn't recognize my /home partition. So I went into my old fstab and copied and pasted the partition that /home is in (hdb6). Now when I boot up Mandrake 10.1, it says there is an error because it cannot write to $/home, or something like that. So how do I get myself access?

Below is the sections that I copied out and pasted into the new fstab

/dev/hdb7 /back2 ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0

/dev/hdb6 /home ext3 defaults 1 2 none

I decided to forget it and just wipe out my /home partition clean. The whole installation went smooth, but when I click on the HOME icon on my desktop, nothing happens. I can't open konqueror manually either! :( I am disappointed in Mandrake 10.1. Other than that, everything seems to be working.

Don't give up that soon. Errors can be solved.