Thanks for the reply. I've got /home mounted on a separate partition so
I'll just do it as you suggest in "1.a)" below. What I want to do is get
back to a potato version of debian. I did an [apt-get upgrade] with the
helix-gnome website in my sources.conf file and it changed *lots* of
stuff. Everything seems to be working fine, but I'm uncomfortable with
security in the unstable version.
USM Bish ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> It depends on whether your /home dir is an independent
> partition, or it is under root dir ("/").
>
> 1. If seperate partition:
>
> a) Just ensure that you do not re-initialise this part-
> ition during re-installation. Just mount it as an
> "existing partition" without re-initialisation.
>
> b) Your fstab need not be tinkered any further, except
> for adding floppy, cd-rom, DOS partitions etc.
>
> 2. If /home is under "/" (root partition):
>
> a) Though it is strongly advised that you should re-
> initialise / and /usr, you may not be in a position
> to do so since contents of /home will be lost.There
> maybe other dirs under / which you want to preserve.
> Just do a rm -rf on the directories that need to be
> re- written and re-install over the old thing with-
> out re-initialising or formatting the "/" (root)
> partition.
>
> b) I have successfully re-installed even seperate dis-
> tros by above technique.I just delete the following
> dirs and re-install:
>
> /bin, /boot, /dev, /lib, /lost+found, /proc, /root,
> /sbin, /tmp, /var
>
> [I know it is a bad idea not to seperate things like
> /lib, /var etc. in separate partitions, but my home
> comp has four OSs and I do not have much luxuries on
> this score]
>
> Normally I move my /root dir (rather than delete) so
> that my dot files and other configurations of root
> can be re-used. I also save copies of important /etc
> files like profile, fstab, wvdial.conf etc before
> doing a re-installation.
>
> My /usr is a seperate partition. I always store my
> /usr/local subdir in another partition before doing
> a re-initialisation/ format of /usr, and copy this
> back later.
>
>
> HTH
>
>
> USM Bish
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 01, 2000 at 02:13:08PM -0700, Dale Morris wrote:
> > This is probably embarassingly simple, but I'd better ask.. I'm thinking
> > of doing a reinstall of 2.2 and would like to use my existing /home
> > directory. That will allow me to keep lots of existing info. I tried
> > this once before w/ Redhat but it didn't work right after the reinstall.
> > Do I just do a regular install *not* mounting the /home partition? After
> > the install, how do I get the /home partion mounted? Can I just copy my
> > /etc/fstab file and /home will mount automatically?
> > thanks
> >
>
>
--
"The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck
the societies in which they occur."
--Albert North Whitehead
