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<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"><div><br></div><div>Thank you again, Israel, it did explain better what you meant, but I would still like to hear exactly how to do what I want to do at this stage. </div><div><br></div><div>First, let me assure you that I am by no means ignorant of matters software ans OS, having been a user and developer on platforms from the IBM 704 right through the entire PC revolution. Even programmed some interesting applications in Forth, where dependencies are everything...Initially I was not interested in Linux since it was going to take a long time to be usable by my particular client set of PC users. However I had repudiated Microsoft because of their unethical approach to the PC market and used DR-DOS until the pressure for GUIs became too intense. I transferred to OS/2 with great technical satisfaction and even some end-user acceptance, until just after the Y2K bug furore, then joined the M$ herd until Linux more or less came of age. Since then I have been trying to use it from the "intelligent user" perspective, rather than becoming a Linux fundi which could be counterproductive in regard to my efforts to spread Linux, as distinct from Android, usage.</div><div><br></div><div>Thus while I could probably sit down for a couple of weeks and RTFM and become a Linux boff in due course, I don't want to. I'm well past retirement age at this stage and there are many other things I want to do with whatever time is left to me. Hopefully Linux will be a continually more viable tool helping me to accomplish these things, but I want to sit in my chosen "intelligent user" space, encouraging hopefully many others to join me. Obviously I need a reference community to whom I can turn with questions that I am out of my depth on, and that's why I'm on this list.</div><div><br></div><div>Now to specifics: My laptop has a 50GB ext4 partition (sda6) with Lubuntu 12.04/14.04.1 installed to some messy degree on it; ~/home occupies 30GB with 15GB taken by other system folders. There is another, 20GB, ext4 partition (sda7) which I have used at various stages to try out different distros on. At the moment it has LXDE14.04.1 cleanly on it, hosting a few applications I cannot do without right now (CUPS, anyone?). I would be rather happy if you could steer me to some config file (I presume) on sda7 where with a bit of text editing I could redirect ~/home searches to sda6. Is this exercise likely to be dangerous in terms of data loss? If it is successful I'll weigh up my options going forward for, e.g. a clean Lubuntu 14.04.1 install on sda6. I can spare the time for backing up ~/home to an external USB drive, but don't want to have to restore it after such a clean install, I am already losing too much productive time on the laptop... If I can just try the exercise of switching the search partition, I may have learned a very valuable technique for various situations.</div><div><br></div><div>Could you please help me in this? Any helpful comments?</div><div><br></div><div>Best regards,</div><div><br></div><div>Basil Fernie</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>On Tue, 09 Sep 2014 22:18:44 +0200, Israel <israeldahl@gmail.com> wrote:<br></div><br><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0.80ex; border-left: #0000FF 2px solid; padding-left: 1ex">
<br>
<div class="moz-forward-container">
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Hi Basil,<br>
The idea behind installing /home to a separate partition
excludes your personal documents (Music, photos, Documents,
Videos, etc...) from the base OS.<br>
All aps are stored in a few general places.... the most
pertinent are:<br>
/usr/bin<br>
/opt<br>
as well as the 'system administrator' apps being in:<br>
/usr/sbin<br>
The /usr/share/applications folder gives the Desktop Environment
(i.e. LXDE/Lubuntu)<br>
the information about the app, like Name (in various languages)
Icon, Category and path to the executable... i.e.
/usr/bin/some-program<br>
Sharing this folder between other distros is <b>HIGHLY
discouraged</b> by most people. You can however have a
partition that you keep separate to share between distros, and
access it at will.<br>
<br>
My point I was making was about things in ~/.config/ and
~/.cache/<br>
There are some configuration files in those folders that
occasionally get messed up in an upgrade. You can move the
entire folder to a backup (mv ~/.config ~/backup_config
&& mv ~/.cache ~/backup_cache)<br>
And see if this fixes your issues. You will lose all of your
data (firefox bookmarks, program settings) but you can (of
course) copy those back from your backup.<br>
<br>
If it doesn't fix your issues, you may need to simply backup
your /home directory and reinstall.<br>
If you are very adept and understand dependencies you can use
apt's cache as a backup for your current programs, though that
is often asking for trouble, so if you are slightly unsure the
answer is 'Do not try this!' :)<br>
<br>
NOW,<br>
to set up a fresh install with a separate /home you must do this
through the 'Something Else' option where you choose what to do
when installing (other options are Replace Lubuntu 14.04,
Install alongside, etc...)<br>
<br>
The way to partition your disk (assuming you have a regular x86
machine (32/64 bit))<br>
is very simple.<br>
<br>
1. Make a partition that is about 20Gigs and set it to mount at
/<br>
<br>
2. If you have 2 Gig of Ram make a swap partition at the end of
the disk that is 2 Gig<br>
basically make a swap that is the same size as your Ram... swap
is not as needed these days, but is very useful in certain
circumstances, there are lots of different opinions about this,
but that is a basic starting point.<br>
<br>
3. Use the rest of the disk mounted at /home<br>
<br>
You should most likely use ext4 format for your filesystems,
though some people like some of the lesser used ones (brtfs for
example) the default install uses ext4, so you probably should
too unless you understand what the other types are and why you
want to use them.<br>
<br>
I hope that explained what I meant much better<br>
<br>
On 09/09/2014 11:36 AM, Basil Fernie wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:op.xlxhrn1rog99lf@basil-lenovo-g585" type="cite">Hi Israel, <br>
<br>
Thanks for the as always considerate response. <br>
<br>
1. I tried the sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get
upgrade <br>
<br>
although I wonder if this has any more effect than issuing the
two commands separately but consecutively. Anyway it downloaded
and installed another 1-2MB of files which might just have been
very recently released to the repositories? Whatever, the whole
thing still failed on the sane-utils as before. <br>
<br>
There's enough Trusty Tahr floating around to thwart the other
sudo which reports there isn't a new release to upgrade to. <br>
<br>
Regarding the /home trick, I'm confused. First, does /home
contain all my chosen and explicitly installed apps as well as
data in eg Documents and Downloads folders? What about
system-tied apps, e.g. utilities, which might be replaced in the
new release by proxies not to my liking? How can I retain those
without fouling up the new installation? I seem to recall that
updated versions of LibreOffice get installed in /opt... <br>
<br>
Second, how do I redirect OS searches for /home away from the
default disk to the substitute, POST-installaion of the new
release? (I'm presuming that if the desirable /home is on sda6
and I am clean-installing to sda7, involving formatting of sda7,
and I rediract /home to sda6 DURING the installation, the
installer is going to wipe the /home on sda6, if not the whole
of sda6, as well as sda7 <br>
<br>
Any authoritative responses will be very welcome! I like the
/home idea as it suggests the potential of having a variety of
Debian-based distros accessing a common data- and- application
base... but, "better safe than sorry" <br>
<br>
Basil <br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Regards</pre>
<br>
</div>
<br>
</blockquote><br><br><br><div id="M2Signature"><div>-- </div><div>Using Opera's mail client: <a href="http://www.opera.com/mail/">http://www.opera.com/mail/</a></div></div></body></html>