Upgrade from 8.04 to 10.04 LTS (BORKED)

[NoOp]

On 09/12/2010 05:03 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
> On 12 September 2010 22:09,  <clintin at linuxmail.org> wrote:
>> This is not an option as there is no space to available to this plus there
>> is over 30 GB of stuff on this 40 GB drive.  I really needed the update to
>> work and preserve all the settings on this system.
> 
> Backup all your stuff, then boot from a live CD, mount the hard disk,
> and delete everything on it except /home and its contents. Be careful
> not to delete the /home folder.

Please don't suggest that. It's unnecessary and IMO quite harmful
advise. What if the OP has packages installed in the /opt folders? For
example, I have:

$ ls /opt
Adobe                JMF-2.1.1e                   openoffice.org
BitDefender-scanner  jmf-2_1_1e-linux-i586GG.bin  openoffice.org3
cycas39              ooo-dev
google               ooo-dev3

Your suggestion would wipe out all of those. A proper inplace reinstall
will preserve the /opt folders.

Further, before any reinstall the OP should backup his sources.list
(/etc/apt/sources.list) to a home folder file so that it can be moved
back to /etc/apt/sources.list, as well as creating a Synaptic markerings
file (File|Save Markings As| check 'Save full state, not only changes'),
again to a home folder file so that he can restore his machine back to
the state it was with all previously installed packages. I've currently
3,173 packages installed on this system - your advise would pretty much
wipe most of those, screw up my Applications menus, and really, really
piss me off after following your advise.

If the OP does an inplace reinstall, preserving / and not formatting,
then his /home and /opt folders will remain intact. The inplace
reinstall will reinstall all of the critical sys files. You then restore
your sources.list, and then reinstall the packages from the saved
markings file (File|Read Markings). Give it a try & you'll see what I am
referring to.