<html><head></head><body><div>On Wed, 2017-08-23 at 00:53 +0000, Iznogoud wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><pre>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.
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</a></pre></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Here's how I upgrade / downgrade Linux installations (yes, both Debian and CentOS distribution upgrades have pissed me off royally in the past).</div><div>(0) capture a list of installed packages in current system</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>(0a) if a Debian system, execute</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>$ dpkg get-selections | grep -v deinstall > ~/Desktop/installed_pkgs</div><div>(1) purchase a new HDD/SSD for the system in question</div><div>(2) install new HDD/SSD in system</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>(2a) place old HDD/SSD into external dock, do not mount yet</div><div>(3) fresh install of new OS version onto new HDD/SSD</div><div>(4) install main software in the new OS version</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>(4a) $ sudo apt-get update</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>(4b) $ sudo apt-get upgrade</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>(4c) $ sudo dpkg --set-selections < /<old_SSD_mnt_point>/home/<userid>/Desktop/installed_pkgs</div><div>(5) execute my acceptance tests based on what I use most</div><div>(6) If any show-stoppers, install old SSD back into system and try again some time later with a future version of the OS</div><div><br></div><div>There's a similar path for CentOS for steps 0 and 4.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Alternatively make an exact duplicate of your old HDD/SSD via:</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span># dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=100M conv=notrunc</div><div>where /dev/sda is your original existing HDD/SSD</div><div>and /dev/sdb is your new blank HDD/SSD</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div></body></html>