Progress on 12.04 (Was: Re: 12.04 upgrade problem)

[Tommy Trussell]

On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 2:04 AM, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:

> On 8 November 2012 01:31, Tommy Trussell <tommy.trussell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Jim Smith <jim at oz.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> Colin Law wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On 7 November 2012 01:32, Jim Smith <jim at oz.net> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> ...
> >>>> Then it looks like 12Gb for / and 36Gb for /home should do it. That is
> >>>> if I
> >>>> decide to partition it like that and not just install on all 48Gb and
> >>>> then
> >>>> copy my /home files onto it.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> If you install over the top of the existing ubuntu partition, but
> >>> select /not/ to format the partition then it will leave /home as it
> >>> is, saving the need to restore that folder.  You should make sure all
> >>> is backed up anyway of course.
> >>>
> >>> Colin
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >> I have thought of that option and it looks pretty good, especially if
> >> there is some app or other means to clear out all of the leftover crap
> from
> >> the previous install. It was a much upgraded system that started when I
> >> first got this laptop, I think it was originally 5.10 or 6.04. I was
> slowly
> >> losing the battle to keep the space on the disk free. It didn't help
> that I
> >> could boot into Gnome, KDE, FVWM, IceWM and maybe a couple other minor
> ones
> >> as well. I think the new one will be concentrated on Gnome with enough
> of
> >> KDE base to run apps like Kstars, some of their screen savers and their
> very
> >> good CD burner.
> >>
> >
> > When you do an UPGRADE of the OS, the upgrader DOES examine the cruft and
> > pitch out packages that are no longer supported, but it upgrades any
> package
> > that's still available in the Ubuntu repositories.
> >
> > When you do an INSTALL (replace Ubuntu) into an existing directory
> > preserving a separate /home partition the resulting system will be much
> like
> > a brand new install, except it won't change the filesystem type of /home
> > from ext3 to ext4. (If you care at all you can do that later, but I
> haven't
> > heard of much reason to even consider it.)
>
> Note that this also applies if you do a new install over the top of a
> system that does not have a separate /home partition, but you select
> not to partition the root directory.  In that case  the /home folder
> (not partition) is left alone.  The net effect is therefore very
> similar to having a separate /home partition.
>
>
That sounds like a great feature! I will try it on my next upgrade.

Unfortunately the option isn't presented very clearly in the installer (at
least it wasn't for the 10.04 to 12.04 upgrade). Even though on that
machine I had a separate /home partition, the wording wasn't completely
reassuring about its ability to preserve things, SO I made a fresh tar.gz
backup of my home directory and copied it to a totally separate drive, then
disconnected it from the machine. THEN I ran the installer, and all went
great.
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