Im not sure if im making a mountain out of a molehill here but I have successfully moved my /home folder to a permanent second 2TB HDD and it has been working fine.
I now want to do an upgrade to 18.04LTS from 16.04LTS. I would like to do a fresh install on my 250GB SSD on which it now resides. The question is, when my new install is up and running is it just a simple edit of the fstab to point to my existing home folder on the second drive to access all my original settings. I have scored the forums on this topic but I cannot seem to find a definitive answer. Sorry if this is a naive question but im a newcomer to Linux and at 65 years of age im a bit slow to catch up.
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I am no expert, but my recommendation is to make a backup of you home folder and any other file you want to keep. Than do a fresh install, and manually recreate all your setting. You can then manually bring over 16.04 folders and files. I think you will have fewer problems with that approach.
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Hi @Chris_York, I will reach your same age in a few months (what a time to be researching Medicare!). Let’s take a look at the two primary functions of a /home directory:
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Personal files including pictures, documents, videos, etc. Maybe scripts.
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Program settings. Mostly in hidden directories.
Now, if you suddenly mount a 16.04 /home directory in a new 18.04 install, 1. is pretty much unaffected but 2. can have some unexpected results, especially regarding desktop settings. It’s a large jump in the MATE/GTK settings running the desktop.
Many applications will actually keep their settings perfectly. I do a case-by-case on this, myself (like ~/.mozilla).
While I’m writing this, @jaybo posted a suggestion perfectly in tune with this in mind.
But if you want to end up with /home on the big drive, you can back it up (just in case), strip out all “settings” directories, and install 18.04 with /home mounted manually. This way the new settings will get installed next to your personal files. Just a thought but don’t forget to back up things.
And just in case you’re unaware, take a look at hidden files in Caja with Ctrl+H toggling them.
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You should be able to upgrade just fine. I don’t know what these other users are on about, but Ubuntu should respect your changes and if it doesn’t, then you can always fix it in post with your previous experience.
If all else fails, a dirty installation by installing without formatting /home isn’t going to do anything but revert some previous settings in your current system, but it will be pretty fool-proof. Make sure to backup /etc/fstab so post-installation you can transplant some basic changes made previously for other devices and partitions if applicable.
In my current setup personally a dirty installation as upgrade wouldn’t be catestrophic, but rather provide mild inconvenience by reinstalling everything and creating all of my symlinks from ~. Still no big deal if I have to unless I’m crunched for time.
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Except he wants to do a fresh install. Doesn’t that change things a bit? The upgrading installer is out of the picture.
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Thanks to you all for the input, I think I have found what I was looking for after a bit more hunting around the forums. This appears to be the answer to my question posted by Wolfman
I appreciate that the desktop may have to be messed around a bit due to the change to GTK but I can live with that.
My primary aim is to just move to 18.04 and keep my home folder intact as I do not want to spend hours reinstalling stuff.
Then a dirty reinstall using the Something else method and declaring the partition ~ is in as not to be formatted will do you just have to reinstall programs but not reconfigure them.
I am trying to understand what is referred to as a “dirty” install, I would have assumed that a straight upgrade without formatting would be classed as dirty but in the tutorial posted by Wolfman the drive where I intend to upgrade from will be formatted therefore would that not be classed as a fresh install?.
Sorry if this sounds a bit naive but i`m trying to learn more about Linux.
I am strict about “Freshness”. A clean install, to me is from-scratch, formatted partitions for everything. Even if an end-user made those partitions in gparted so they can have labels and didn’t format again prior to installation (which would remove said labels) it would still be “Clean” because the formation steps were performed by the end-user.
A “Dirty” install to me is something you’ve already personalized and mucked up. Configuration preferences for some programs in ~ will be overwritten but seeded with preferences for other programs which were not installed as part of the kit you get out of the box. There may also be software issues with invalid or outdated configuration files unforeseen by software developers, which you’d have to figure out a way around. / would be clean since that was wiped out but ~ which some programs in / may rely upon for presentation to the end-user will differ from a clean install with a clean home partition.
But above all else they are ambiguous terms. Kind of like how packages with the word ugly usually contain non-free / proprietary components. If people want to consider just a formatted system partition as “Fresh” or “Clean” they can do that, and there’s no problem with that.
Many thanks for your reply, it is certainly a comprehensive answer and one that covers most viewpoints. I now have a better understanding of what the term now means, it is only through these forums that users can extend their knowledge and understanding.
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