<html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFCC"> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">Michael, I've found that there are few dot files that I need to keep when updating. If on transfers them over after a new install, there's the potential for incompatibilities. I keep /home on a separate partition and back it up before a fresh install, which I prefer to doing an upgrade for major releases. (I also keep backups and VMs on a separate partition). I do a custom install / partitioning and tell it to mount the home partition as "/home" After an update, here's folder and files I replace with old backed-up files. Some of these are specific to my system and reflect install of software not part of a "normal" distro: <blockquote>.dropbox .filezilla .gimp (if its the same version as what was installed with upgrade) .jalbum .jedit to keep defaults for FireFox, <blockquote>.mozilla -- especially the folder <strange name>.default which has custom settings, etc. <strange name> is a firefox generated name consisting of a string of characters generated randomly to help maintain security across installs. </blockquote> to keep recognized ssh hosts <blockquote>.ssh/known_hosts </blockquote> .VirtualBox </blockquote> I do this before starting applications like T-bird and FireFox - new installs will create new defaults. I edit the new .bashrc, to add-in aliases that I have created, to avoid the possibility of creating conflicts with possible new content in .bashrc for upgrades. /roger On 12/27/2013 05:26 PM, Michael Shiloh wrote: </div> <blockquote cite="mid:52BDFE7F.5060501@gmail.com" type="cite">This is an excellent discussion, I have learned lots. I too have been trying to figure out what to put things to simplify reinstalls or recovery. I've been using Ubuntu One to back up all my files of importance, except for big files like pictures, music, and videos. Those get backed up to a local disk, along with my entire home directory. I have one laptop at my workshop and one at home. They both sync the Ubuntu One directory, so I have a backup there, although I'm not 100% convinced that Ubuntu One syncs very well. As Benjamin points out, the problem is the various local configuration files, e.g. .config and others. Some we want to keep, some we want to discard and rebuild. Case in point: Before I understood how Thunderbird worked, I ended up with 3 different email folders, some of which are valuable archives of accounts I no longer have access to, others are duplicates of my active accounts and could be deleted. I use Thunderbird for all my email, so it has 4 active email accounts, and archives of several inactive accounts. Some day I need to sort this out, but meanwhile every time I re-install I just copy the whole mess over. It's a huge waste of space but doesn't really cause trouble. I think what Benjamin (and me, and others) are getting to is that there is a while mess of dot files and dot directories, some of which we would like to copy and restore to a new installation, and others of which we would like to discard and recreate. I think key to navigating this is understanding what all these files are, what programs or functions they belong to, whether they can be recreated or should be saved, whether they duplicate something that exists in the cloud, etc. etc. Is anyone aware of an article that describes this? Of course the combined wisdom of this mailing list embodies that information, which is one of the many reasons I subscribe and read. I thank you all for sharing your wisdom. Michael </blockquote> </body> </html>