Slackware Re-Installation
 

Hello,

I asked this question in another thread (as a sub question), but I was curious as to whether it was possible to delete all directories on / with the exception of /home, then re-install slackware without a re-format?

Thanks,

corte

The best way would be to move /home onto it's own partition, thus separating it completely from the OS.

But the Slackware installer does offer the option to install without formatting first, which would preserve your /home/username directory.

Excellent, I'll go ahead & back everything up then attempt to re-install without a reformat. I've always been afraid of having too much free space 1 partition & not enough on another, therefore, I never put /home on a separate one (though I now see the value in this!!)

Thanks for the quick response.

Hi,

The problem with a re-install without format will be that there will be stale files or directories with files that will remain.

I suggest that you copy or move the '/home' to a alternate storage, then when you do rebuild you can move to a separate storage or device. You could create a new '/home' at the end of your hdd to allow you to rebuild without over writing or formatting.

A good solution would be to create a extended partition on your hdd that would allow you to have more than just the 4 primary partitions. That way you could create your '/' and '/home' on separate partitions. I use the '4th' primary assignment as my extended partition then create;

As stated in his initial post, he intends to delete everything but /home from the drive before running the installer.

Don't forget to bring along your configuration files.

Backing up the whole thing and then copying what you need back into their rightful places is preferable over rewriting perfectly good configuration files any day. :D