Hello all.

I'm currently running 9.2 and want to upgrade to 10.1, and wanted to ask what I needed to back up before I did so. I was thinking I should back up my /home directory, but is there anywhere else any of my custom settings reside that I would want to back up? I never save anything anywhere other than /home.

Oh, I also know I have to back up my /etc/lilo.conf file, because I have some custom settings there as well.

Or does 10.1 simply detect that you are already running a Linux system and simply upgrade it?

Thanks in advance for any insight/opinions.

any startup scripts that you have edited yourself.............
/etc/profile??
/etc/passwd-maybe
/etc/shadow-maybe
your Xorg(XFree86.config)
any programs you manually installed to......../usr/
/usr/games/
???
whatever you think is important enough NOT to lose!!

There are major differences in the configurations and scripts between these releases.

Even an upgrade is usually problematic in the long run.

You should not really use your old configuration files, though you may want to refer to them.

Here is what I do.

Download a LiveCD distribution. Any will do (check out SAM for one that is based upon Mandrake).

Mount your old partitions temporarily.

Then

mkdir /mnt/oldroot

mount /dev/hdaX /mnt/oldroot

cd /mnt/oldroot (or whatever you called it...)

tar -czvf /mnt/oldroot/etc/* /mnt/home/MYHOME/oldetc.tar.gz

This saves off all of your old etc stuff in case you need to refer to it after the upgrade.

Now erase EVERYTHING else from your old drive partitions but leave the partitions themselves alone...

E.G.

cd /mnt/oldroot

rm -rf /usr /var /sbin /etc /tmp

And all of the other NON-HOME directories.

This cleans out all of the old Linux installation leaving behind just your (important) data files.

Then shutdown and boot from the installation CD's.

When you get to the partitioning portion SKIP reformatting and re-assign your partitioins as you had them before. Then do a new install.

This permits you to retain all of your old stuff which you may desire while otherwise starting with a clean consistent installation.

Once your system boots up you can untar your saved /etc files elsewhere and manually adjust anything you may need to more closely reflect your old configuration.