On Wed, 2017-08-23 at 00:53 +0000, Iznogoud wrote: > Mike, > Without knowing exactly how Ubuntu deals with a new installation on a > disk that > already has partitions (and not being an Ubuntu user) I cannot tell > you that I > have a cookbook solution. But what I can tell you is that any sane > distro will > ask you were to install the root directory "/" and certainly whether > to do > any formatting of the existing partition. I'd rename the /home to > /home_OLD > and go with a fresh install step-by-step minus any formatting. > > Booting and having a proper boot-loader is the crucial part. It will > likely > place grub where it should be in a partition that will be mounted as > /boot > under the new system. In essence, even if you wiped /bin /usr and all > of that > clean, the system would be new from scratch anyway and with /home_OLD > untouched. > > If you really paranoid, mount a USB drive with any filesystem on it > (it can > be an NTFC) and do this: > > 'rsync -av /home/ /mnt/where_USB_is_mounted/home_TRANSFER/' > > You can always recover from there if anything goes wrong. > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list Here's how I upgrade / downgrade Linux installations (yes, both Debian and CentOS distribution upgrades have pissed me off royally in the past). (0) capture a list of installed packages in current system (0a) if a Debian system, execute $ dpkg get-selections | grep -v deinstall > ~/Desktop/installed_pkgs (1) purchase a new HDD/SSD for the system in question (2) install new HDD/SSD in system (2a) place old HDD/SSD into external dock, do not mount yet (3) fresh install of new OS version onto new HDD/SSD (4) install main software in the new OS version (4a) $ sudo apt-get update (4b) $ sudo apt-get upgrade (4c) $ sudo dpkg --set-selections < /<old_SSD_mnt_point>/home/<userid>/Desktop/installed_pkgs (5) execute my acceptance tests based on what I use most (6) If any show-stoppers, install old SSD back into system and try again some time later with a future version of the OS There's a similar path for CentOS for steps 0 and 4. Alternatively make an exact duplicate of your old HDD/SSD via: # dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=100M conv=notrunc where /dev/sda is your original existing HDD/SSD and /dev/sdb is your new blank HDD/SSD upgrade in place, run acceptance tests; if show-stoppers, put new HDD/SSD into system and boot normally to be back where you were prior to any upgrade attempt. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20170822/45dcf712/attachment.html>