Hello.
I am trying to upgrade slackware 10.1 to 10.2 by re-installation, and very much like to keep the /home partition. I have read some similar threads on the subject of upgrading, yet I do not have the slightest hint about how to mount the /home when re-installing. I mean should I mount /home right after partitioning, or mount it after the re-boot? I am confused about the bit that if I mounted it after the re-boot, would there be a second /home created?

I have done an upgrade once, but I just intentionally deleted everything, and I really want to know how to keep all the data and config files in /home this time, so if it's not too much of a convenience, would someone walk me through the procedures?

Thank you!

If you have a separate partition for /home , take notes of the partition numbers for / and /home (and other partitions if you have them).
Then, once you start installing the new Slackware, you get straight to "setup" without first running (c)fdisk.
Somewhat later, you will get to the point where you have to tell the installer about your partitions and where to mount them, and whether to format them or not.
For the partition where you used to have the root (/) tell the installer to use that one again for '/' and format it. The other partition that it will show contains your /home and your precious data. Tell the installer you want to mount that under /home (you'll have to type that) and then not to format that partition.

The rest of the install will be straight-forward. You will end up with a fully functional Slackware 10.2 and the /home partition correctly mounted and available to you. There is nothing else to do, except for creating the user accounts that you had. Do not forget to give the new accounts the same uid-numbers as before! Otherwise you will not be able to access your own files on the new Slackware install-

Eric

i do reccomend making an backup of your /home folder (on a usb stick or so)

Out of interest, how do you do that?

Would it also work to make copies of the password and shadow files before the install and put them back after? I imagine it wouldn't if any UIDs for system accounts have been changed, but is this event likely?

When you add the user it will ask you what user ID to give each user, you can either hit enter to accept the next uid#, or enter the uid from your previous install.

another option is to forget about the /home partition during install.
after install and before making new users you can mount the /home-partition
and add a line to fstab to mount it at boot.

i use this method because i once managed to format my home partition while installing.
( i believe that's three wrong keystrokes, but it's possible...)

egag

Hmm? I always do:

and since my home is in /home/myname, I've never had a problem.