changing distro, keeping /home partition

farmerdave · 09-14-2008, 08:29 PM

I have been using Ubuntu for a little while, and installed it with a seperate /home partition. Everything else went into the same partition as root. I now want to change distro to Slackware, and keep my personal files. But each application i previously installed such as amarok, has created extra hidden files in my /home partition. All i want to keep is my music, photos, documents etc.

Is it safe (or reasonable) to boot a live cd (such as Ubuntu's) and delete all those extra folders, keeping just my personal files, and then immediately installing Slackware, specifying the separate partition for /home?

abonnema · 09-14-2008, 09:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by farmerdave

I have been using Ubuntu for a little while, and installed it with a seperate /home partition. Everything else went into the same partition as root. I now want to change distro to Slackware, and keep my personal files. But each application i previously installed such as amarok, has created extra hidden files in my /home partition. All i want to keep is my music, photos, documents etc.

Is it safe (or reasonable) to boot a live cd (such as Ubuntu's) and delete all those extra folders, keeping just my personal files, and then immediately installing Slackware, specifying the separate partition for /home?

Hi dave,

Seems like you already swapped to Slackware from Ubuntu.
You need to do some research:

1. What UID does your user have now and what UID did it have in Ubuntu? If they are not the same, make sure they have the UID that Slackware expects. You might get unexpected effects if you don't.

2. Slackware has its own way of installing packages. For instance, I swapped Fedora Core for Ubuntu and back and finally returned to Ubuntu. Each time I did this I had to copy over my thunderbird mail files to the appropriate directory (i.e. from .mozilla to .mozilla-thunderbird and back). You need to do this before starting to update the mail. This is only an example. In theory you might need to do this for each package that you value.

So: find out which directory is installed for each package using Ubuntu and using Slackware and do the appropriate copies.

That's all you need to do. And if you want this to be easier next time: write down what you did in a text file so you will remember what to do next time.

Enjoy!

Guus Bonnema, Leiden, The Netherlands.

farmerdave · 09-14-2008, 11:12 PM

I actually dont want to keep any of my old settings from any program, but only the files themselves.

Because the /home/david directory is getting so cluttered, migrating to Slackware would leave a lot of unused files and folders (and because i am inexperienced i dont know which ones would belong to Slackware and which belong to Ubuntu) i am asking can i simply erase them all except the music, photos etc, and then freshly install Slackware with the cleaned /home/david as the new /home directory?

Bruce Hill · 09-15-2008, 01:20 AM

Dave,

You can tell the Slackware installer to mount /home under the
previous /home and do NOT format it. That's no problem.

BUT -- make sure you delete ALL of the dot files (hidden files);
for example:

Code:

mingdao@silas:/server1/T61/mingdao$ ls -al
total 66
drwx--x--x 17 mingdao users   768 2008-09-15 10:36 ./
drwxr-xr-x  3 mingdao users  1000 2008-09-14 17:09 ../
-rw-------  1 mingdao users    97 2008-08-31 22:18 .Xauthority
-rw-------  1 mingdao users  1178 2008-09-02 08:47 .bash_history
drwxr-xr-x  2 mingdao users    80 2008-08-30 23:40 .config/
drwx------  3 mingdao users    80 2008-08-30 23:40 .dbus/
-rw-------  1 mingdao users    66 2008-08-31 00:21 .directory
drwxr-xr-x  5 mingdao users   216 2008-09-02 08:36 .gkrellm2/
drwx------  2 mingdao users   168 2008-08-31 00:01 .gnupg/
drwxr-----  2 mingdao users    80 2008-08-30 23:41 .hplip/
drwx------  4 mingdao users   192 2008-08-30 23:41 .kde/
-rw-------  1 mingdao users    35 2008-09-02 07:30 .lesshst
drwx------  3 mingdao users    72 2008-08-30 23:41 .local/
drwx------  4 mingdao users   104 2008-08-31 00:04 .mozilla/
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users  1229 2008-08-31 00:18 .nvidia-settings-rc
drwxr-xr-x  2 mingdao users   120 2008-08-31 07:56 .qt/
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users  3729 2008-08-30 23:38 .screenrc
-rw-------  1 mingdao users    48 2008-08-31 22:18 .serverauth.3099
drwx------  2 mingdao users    80 2008-09-02 07:31 .ssh/
drwxr-xr-x  2 mingdao users    80 2008-08-30 23:41 .xine/
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users   516 2008-08-30 23:40 .xinitrc
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users   779 2008-08-30 23:38 .xsession
drwx------  2 mingdao users    48 2008-08-30 23:40 .xwmconfig/
drwxr-xr-x  2 mingdao users    48 2008-08-31 00:04 Desktop/
drwxr-xr-x  3 mingdao users   168 2008-08-31 07:56 build/
drwxr-xr-x  2 mingdao users   128 2008-08-31 19:22 kernel/
-rw-r--r--  1 mingdao users  2770 2008-09-02 06:47 lsmod-2.6.24.5
-rw-r--r--  1 root    root  14012 2008-09-02 06:48 lspci-v-T61

That is from a relatively clean install of Slackware-current to my
new T61 laptop. So when you do the install of Slackware, you do not
want any of the hidden files from Ubuntu. If you just pick that same
partition to mount as /home during the Slackware install, and do not
format it, then it will be as it was with Ubuntu.

As Guus noted, you will need to have the same UID (user ID) for your
user in Slackware that you had in Ubuntu. By default Slackware will
give you 1000 for the first user you set up. The worst case scenario
is that after you install Slackware, you can change owner of the files
and directories for user /home/david as root like this:

Code:

chown -R david.users /home/david/

farmerdave · 09-16-2008, 08:57 AM

Thanks, thats what i have now done, and everything is performing well.

Bruce Hill · 09-16-2008, 09:13 AM

Good on yah!