Non destructive install for live CD

[Ian Soutar]

To answer the questions below ...

Doing a non-destructive install is quicker than repairing the system 
generally. It is less technical and can be automated.

I can repair a broken system with Kanotix by re-installing the live cd 
without formatting my home directory in only 15 minutes or so. I do not 
retain any hidden files except for email ones and browser ones.

So the important step is to rename your home directory to something like 
home_old. After the install only move essential hidden files to get 
email back etc. That way you can move freely from distro to distro as 
well as repairing a bad installation. I like to do it this way because 
it is mindless and totally reliable.

Ian.



************ PREVIOUS QUESTIONS BELOW ***********

While I somewhat agree, Ubuntu supports and encourages in place upgrades
(as does Debian), and there are other ways to rescue a wonky install
rather than reinstallation.




For more complicated uses, the alternative install CD does support
reusing a partition without formatting it (again, I don't know if this
is possible or not on the default desktop install).


> > Later at this point some recovery tools could hook in to really try
> > and restore the system that was installed there - restore the users
> > and their home directories, mounted filesystems, installed packages,
> > configuration of such packages, ...
>   

Such a system would be nice, I agree, but I can also see it being quite
a headache to implement (was the installed system Suse, Redhat, Debian,
Ubuntu, linux-from-scratch?). What versions of software were there? Do
config files needs to be transformed to suit the current versions?

Put another way, wouldn't good in-place upgrade and recovery tools and
excellent backup tools be better?


> > --
> > Best regards,
> >     Aigars Mahinovs        mailto:aigarius at debian.org