Better way to install/upgrade?

[geo]

I did that once before when I had 7.04 installed and upgraded to 7.10 - and it became totally corrupted, the machine struggled to even boot up, some data became lost - and the machine is not exactly a slug (Dell Optiplex GX260 with Pentum 4 at 2.5 GHz, 2 Gig RAM).
 
Jim Hutchinson over at the answers.launchpad help site told me that it's better usually to just wipe the drive and start fresh and after that nasty experience I don't want to risk data loss again.
 
You say just letting the upgrade/updater would not be a problem? I'd like to try it but after that experience, I'm very hesitant.
 
Next question? Ok? In the partitioning scheme I suggested (one for the OS, one for the user data) if I were to replace the OS for an upgrade, would any user data (such as passwords, cookies, logins, desktop customization, music play lists, e-mails, bookmark files) be at risk? In other words, where does the user data like this get stored? In the OS? Or in the individual user accounts?
 
My current plan was just to connect another hard drive, login to each account on the Dell, copy the whole user directory over to the hard drive - repeat as often as necessary for each account.
 
Or is there a better way to backup all user data and keep all things intact, including permissions, etc...then restore?
 
Thanks,
geo



--- On Wed, 6/25/08, volksman <v0lksman69 at gmail.com> wrote:

From: volksman <v0lksman69 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Better way to install/upgrade?
To: yaktur at yahoo.com, "The Canadian Ubuntu Users Community" <ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com>
Date: Wednesday, June 25, 2008, 9:30 AM

It's always nice to start fresh but not always necessary.  I've done a 
number of in place upgrades from 7.10 to 8.04 and have had no issues.  
So that is the easy way and you lose nothing (although always best to 
backup anything you can't live without -just in case-).

You're partition layout is a good one.  Nothing wrong with that.  Swap 
is suggested to be 1.5 times the amount of physical mem but that is 
outdated and not even needed anymore.  I know people who run without 
swap.  Plus (not SURE if this is true or not) I've read that the kernel 
can't handle anything larger than 2 gig swap partitions (nor would you 
want to swap more than that, the machine would be chuggin pretty hard).

If I were you however I would use the update manager to pull 8.04 
updates to your machine and upgrade in place.  That will save you a lot 
of time you can then devote to getting Joomla setup (cause that will be 
a whole new set of headaches when you finally get it installed)... :)



geo wrote:
>
> I'm currently running Ubuntu 7.10 and I received 8.04 on CD in the 
> mail recently. I'l like to upgrade but that usually means wiping the 
> whole drive (EEK!!).
>
>  
>
> I have 50 gig of family stuff that would be lost forever (unless I can 
> borrow my sister-in-law's USB drive???). The drive is 100 gig.
>
>  
>
> Currently the drive is set up as 1 big partition with a small slice 
> set aside as a swap.
>
>  
>
> Would it make sense to set up 2 unequal partitions as well as a swap 
> for a total of 3 partitions?
>
>  
>
> 1 partition would contain only the operating system (maybe 10 gig?)
>
> 1 partition (the larger one) would contain the user home directories 
> (maybe 85 gig?)
>
> 1 partition would be the swap partition (2 gig because my machine has 
> 2 gig of RAM).
>
>  
>
> Does this make sense? Would it work? Is it do-able? Let me know 
> please, I have a 4 day weekend coming up and perhaps I'll have time to

> do some major housekeeping on the Dell.
>
>  
>
> Thanks
>
> geo
>
>


      
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