reinstall 18.04

[Karl Auer]

On Sun, 2020-08-30 at 01:16 -0700, John R. Sowden wrote:
> I want to "reinstall the operating system"
> [...], but I did not set up the home directory in a
> separate partition.

If  you have a backup of the things you value, simply reinstall Linux
from scratch, the same way you have already done at least once, then
restore your treasures from the backup.

If you do not have a backup, but your system will stay usable for long
enough to make one, do that - for example to a USB stick or external
drive.

If don't have a backup and your system is not usable enough to make
one, you will need to extract the drive from the system, put it into a
USB enclosure (or a desktop as a second drive) and access the disk that
way.

An alternative to the above is to boot from a USB stick (or CD), and
then make a backup while not booted off the problem disk. If you have a
bootable USB stick or can make one, this is probably the most reliable,
most straightforward way to do it.

All of the above assumes that the error you were seeing is a "soft"
error, and not  problem with the hardware. It would be very helpful to
see some of those error messages you were talking about.

Regards, K.

PS: If you purchased your computer with Linux already installed,
contact the vendor for advice before doing anything else. And tell us
here the vendor and exact model, because someone else here may have the
same one.


-- 
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Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer

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