what to consider when performing a clean-install
 

Hello altogether,

as my system Lubuntu 16.04.5 LTS, 64 bit gets its updates only util April next year I´ll eventually have to deal with the topic of upgrades or clean-install.

I´ve been collecting opinions and views and it seems that to avoid any potential difficulties after an upgrade a clean-install would be the way to go.

I´ve got three partitions on my system: /-partition, /home-partition and a third partition for the data of my virtual machines.

According to the info I got on https://itsfoss.com/replace-linux-from-dual-boot/ it´s possible to retain the /home-partition with a clean-install. I think that´s valid for my third partition as well.

So it´s basically the /-partition which is created afresh.
In order to produce a list of the programmes that are manually installed on my current system I use the command

and after installing bionic I restore them with

BUT: I´m sure there are a few other things to be taken into consideration. After thinking about it for a while I came up with:

- I have programmes installed as snaps......
- what about keys for enigmail used in thunderbird?
- changes in the fstab-file
- /usr/local/bin: I´ve put some scripts in there
- what about my printer configuration?

Plus: I´m sure there are some other things I haven´t thought of.

Addressing those of you who have experience in performing a clean-install:

How do you go about it? Is there something else important to consider?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Greetings
Rosika :study:

you need to save your local settings (some files under-inside /etc for example). Your home will not be modified, but probably you need to reconfigure your apps like mailer - but actually you know your system and you know what to save. (if you have a database, if you have <whatever> installed and customized...)

Reinstalling packages may or may not work, sometimes the name of the packages are modified/renamed or just a different one required on the new system.

Hello pan64,

thanks for your reply.

Yes, it´s actually true that I have to know the things I installed/modified etc. myself.
Yet when I first started to use Lubuntu as my productive system I was a novice after all. So there are certainly things I haven´t jotted down as I would do today.

/etc is worth taking care of. Thanks for pointing that out.

I think it´s a good thing that I make system-backups with clonezilla on a monthly basis, and certainly before a clean-install.
So with the workaround to produce a mountable img from a clonezilla backup described on
https://drbl.org/faq/fine-print.php?...ne_restore.faq
it should be possible to access any data from the old /-partition afterwards if need be.

Thanks again.

Greetings
Rosika