re-install

[Liam Proven]

On 18 March 2013 12:12, Ash Wyllie <ashwmls at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2013-03-18 at 11:54 +0000, Liam Proven wrote:
>> On 18 March 2013 11:39, Ash Wyllie <ashwmls at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I've just re-installed Ubuntu. Before I started I backed up /home/user
>> > to an external drive. I then copied the backup to /home on the new
>> > system.
>> >
>> > But evolution and fstop (and others?) behave as if it is a new
>> > installation and don't see the data in .evolution and Pictures/Photos.
>> >
>> > Is there a way to force these programs to recognize okd data in this
>> > situation?
>>
>> Was /home a separate partition?
>
> /home is now a separate partition, to make it easier if I ever have to
> do this again.

OK.

So what you would have needed to do is this:

[1] Use a LiveCD or something to partition your drive, with separate
partitions for /, /home and swap (plus any others for Windows or
whatever)

[2] Format them all

[3] Restore the contents of your old /home *directory* into your new
/home *filesystem*

_then_

[4] Reinstall Ubuntu and tell it to use /dev/sda(whatever) as /home
and not to format it

Also, the user numbers need to match. The nice friendly names are just
a convenient alias, like www.google.com is just a friendly alias to
173.194.67.103 provided by DNS.

If you type

cat /etc/passwd

... then you'll see the actual numbers. I am the only user on my
system so my user number is 1000 in group 1000:

lproven:x:1000:1000:Liam Proven,,,:/home/lproven:/bin/bash

That's what matters most: my files are owned by user [1000:1000] who
happens to be referred to by the name "lproven".

If you were using the a/c created second on your old installation, you
might be user [1001] in group [1000], that is, [1001,1000]:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_identifier

/Both/ the name /and/ the user number need to match.

But if you only ever have 1 account, this probably already does, so it
won't matter.

The greater question being, did you follow the order of the sequence
above? Restore /home *before* reinstalling?

--
Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
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