Reinstalling/Downgrading Ubuntu

[Karl F. Larsen]

NoOp wrote:
> Having a Karl moment (no offense intended Karl :-) and decided to test
> how best to backdown to hardy from jaunty on one of my test systems
> while preserving the /home folders. I failed as I tried to accomplish
> this from the hardy alternate CD & just ended up reinstalling over the
> drive.
>
> The question of reinstalling/downgrading seems to come up every few
> months, so I'm offering to play guinea pig on a test system for
> suggested methods. So if you have a favorite/workable solution I'd like
> to hear about it. In the end, I'd like to test & document a
> reinstall/downgrade Ubuntu while preserving /home for Dummies set of
> instructions. Note: yes I know that I can do this with a separate /home
> partition, but in the end many/most users don't do this upon
> installation (nor are there easy prompts in the installers to do the
> same), so I'd like to keep to the 'preserve /home' theme.
>   
    To use the same /home on many versions of Ubuntu you MUST put your 
/home in a partition not used by other system. This means you need to 
know how to make a partition, and how to cause /etc/fstab to load it 
automatically on all the Ubuntu's you have on that computer.

    These two steps are not easy for a just converted Windows user.

Karl



> There are several blueprints & ideas on how to accomplish this:
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubiquity-preserve-home
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbiquityPreserveHome
> http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/14021/
> [Alternate CD: reinstall Ubuntu over existing partition while preserving
> /home ]
> http://ubuntutip.googlepages.com/reinstall
> [How to reinstall Ubuntu]
> http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/5390/
> [Offer to create a separate /home partition and use existing ones]
>
> I don't mind testing the above and any other solutions folks have to
> offer (it's a slow week in client land). I'd very much like to figure
> out how to easily do this with the Alternate CD(s).
>
> Note: Only standard Gnome Ubuntu liveCD & Alternate CD suggestions please.
>
> Along these same lines, sometime back there was a thread "apt-get system
> reinstallation" whereby Andy Baxter wrote up a nice howto
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReinstallingSamePackages
> Note to Andy: I ran across this in my search on how to reinstall
> existing packages & this uses Synaptic and seems to be a very easy way
> to accomplish the same task:
> <http://www.ubuntugeek.com/howto-reinstall-all-of-currently-installed-packages-in-fresh-ubuntu-install.html>
>
>
>   


-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.
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