Reloading user settings after a fresh reinstall

[Dotan Cohen]

On 16/05/07, O. Sinclair <o.sinclair at gmail.com> wrote:
> Larry Hartman wrote:
> > The last time I installed Kubuntu I made sure that my /home directory was on a
> > separate partition.  I am thinking of reloading feisty as a fresh install, my
> > current load is twice upgraded.  I wish to do a fresh install of Kubuntu and
> > retain my user settings.
> >
> > Can someone give me some guidance or point me to forum entry, etc?  Would like
> > to have the general steps laid out for me.
> >
> > 1.  Do I need to use the same username and password?
> > 2.  Will I have trouble setting up KMail?
>
> I can at least tell you what I did in the same situation. I gave up on
> the separate Home partition, there are times when eg a temp setting does
> not work as expected. Further I badly needed to weed files. NOT saying
> you either must or should, my method should work for you nevertheless.
> If you dont want to weed the Home partition just leave it unchanged and
> make sure it is mounted as /home and not formatted.
>
> As for question 1) I would say yes unless you want headaches with
> file/user rights. There could be a tool out there to avoid this of course.

If you want change usernames, then after the install run this in your
user's home directory, assuming that it's user# 1000(the Ubuntu
default):
$ chown 1000 -R *
$ chgrp 1000 -R *

That's good for switching distros, too. I just moved over from Fedora,
and although I used the same username, I had to chown and chgrp all
the old files to the correct user number.

> As for 2) I had no problems whatsoever but had to recreate Identities,
> accounts and filters. And one thing, a lot of mail comes up as Unread
> after putting back the backed up files. This might not apply at all if
> you leave Home untouched.

Same with me. I don't understand why these settings aren't recreated.

> I used KBackup (found at kde-apps.org) to backup files. I made sure to
> mark hidden directories such as .kde or at least the subdirectories of
> this I figured might be important. Others will swear by Keep or Ark for
> backing up, I like KBackup. It's only drawbackup is that there is no
> Restore facility built-in but that was easily sorted with Ark and some
> checkin on the comments at kde-apps regarding KBackup.

Best backup app: cp. Just copy the files. Then copy them backto where
you need them.

> Having done my backup and moved it off disk (in my case to a network
> server) I simply rebooted with a CD (in my case Alternate rather than
> Live), took a deep breath and repartioned the whole disk and reinstalled
> fresh. I made sure the swap was 2 * RAM, this cause I use a laptop and
> Hibernate won't work otherwise. I also used exactly the same hostname
> and username as before.

As I've got 2GB of physical memory on the lappy, I only installed 3GB
of swap. Maybe that's why I cannot suspend? I suspended fine in FC6
with the same amount of swap.

> After that it was reinstalling some apps I consider mighty useful
> (Swiftfox etc) and then I restored my backed up files. KMail and Kopete
> came up with no major headaches (avoid saving .kopete directory, you
> only need to recreate your identities and your contacts should come back).

If you don't save the .kopete directory then you will lose everything
except the contact. That means history, amoung other things, and
history is rather important to me.

> Much less trouble then I imagined to be honest once I got past a very
> irritating problem with the x-server not starting on my laptop.

Yep, I also had a hard time with X. In the end I used my old Fedora
xorg.conf file.

Dotan Cohen

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