Although this is obvious to many long-time computer users, there are still many who skip this phase, and many newbies who do not take it seriously enough.
I see that several of the problems here could have been avoided by dutifully performing this step.
I suggest that someone keep bumping this advice to the top now & then so that users will be more likely to pay heed.
It is much nicer than giving Shoulda-Woulda-Couldas after the fact.
Make Sure You Perform Full Backups of Your HD and have Reliable Backups (I usually suggest 3, one that does not work, one for the Ooops!, and a 3rd to recover with. ;)) before you attempt an install of OpenSUSE 13.1
Not trying to be critical of anyone, just trying to save some of the next users to attempt an install from suffering severe panic and frustration.
This is an absolute great suggestion! It is my opinion, the number one install problem is hard disk partitioning problems and user error, what you need to do and if it goes wrong, you will need that backup. Of course, video problems and trying to deal with dual boot with Windows and and GPT disk formats. Besides doing a backup, you should make every effort to understand your hard disk setup and just where you intend on installing openSUSE 13.1.
Lots of hard questions need answers before you let that install proceedure.
On 2013-11-27 23:56, Fraser Bell wrote:
> Make Sure You Perform Full Backups of Your HD and have Reliable
> Backups (-I usually suggest 3, one that does not work, one for the
> Ooops!, and a 3rd to recover with.- ;)) before you
> attempt an install of OpenSUSE 13.1
Rather, before you install any operating system
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
… heh. That’s actually what I meant to imply, of course, but I wanted to especially target 13.1 newcomers. I did not mean to leave the inference that 13.1 is so bad that … :FIM:
Thanks for clarifying for all.
(BTW: If you backup with Clonezilla, and your boot is from an extended partition, your machine likely won’t boot after a full restore, because somehow Clonezilla loses that boot sector. You will need to fix it by re-installing Grub & boot sector)
On Wed, 27 Nov 2013 23:56:01 +0000, rdonnelly2001 wrote:
> Yeah see my sig, I upped 2 systems to 13.1 with no problems, glad I
> had the backups just in case.
Yep. Backups are like snow tires (if you happen to live in a place where
snow happens) - you hope you don’t need them, but if you do, you’re glad
you’ve got 'em.
On 2013-11-28 01:36, Fraser Bell wrote:
>
> robin_listas;2602911 Wrote:
> … heh. That’s actually what I meant to imply, of course, but I wanted
> to especially target 13.1 newcomers. I did not mean to leave the
> inference that 13.1 is so bad that … :FIM:
Even for installing Windows you should make a backup
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
… and on many other factors, including one called “luck”. Scenario: Half way through install, drunk driver hits power pole outside house, power out, battery back-up fails, HD crashes, and unlike the times before when you were lucky, this time the head hits the disk.
Yes, this is an important point. I regularly use “rsync” to keep updated copies of important files on desktop, on laptop, on work desktop. So, even without formal backups, I have sufficient redundancy.
These are also important points. Because I test beta (and earlier) releases, I have installation down to a fine art. And I do pre-plan my partition setup.
I think the summary should be this:
If you take all of the defaults when installing, then best to do regular backups.
If you carefully plan your installs, then you should just as carefully plan having sufficient redundancy and backups for important data.
On 2013-11-28 05:36, nrickert wrote:
>
> Fraser_Bell;2602897 Wrote:
>> Make Sure You Perform Full Backups of Your HD and have Reliable Backups
>> (I usually suggest 3, one that does not work, one for the Ooops!, and a
>> 3rd to recover with. ) before you attempt an install of OpenSUSE 13.1
>
> I didn’t.
>
> I have recent backups of “/home”. I never backup the root file system.
> I can always reinstall that.
>
> Since I reused my “/home” partition, I did not need to use any of my
> recent backups.
If you are upgrading, it usually means that you want to keep not only
home, but the system. If the upgrade fails, you loose that system. Even
if at that point you decide on a fresh install on top, you need access
to the backup to restore the files in there that you wanted to keep, and
to look at the complex config settings you made.
Or, with the backup, once you know why the upgrade failed, you can
restore and retry with upgrade.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Yes, that’s the difference. I never upgrade. It is always a fresh install, but retaining “/home”.
I do keep an archive of configuration changes (mostly to files in “/etc”. That archive in on the “/home” partition so that it is preserved across new installs and is backed up when I backup “/home”.
Once I have done a fresh install, I then proceed to delete “.kde4” and other settings files from my home directory, so that I get to see a fresh view of the desktop. Actually, I move “.kde4” to “OLD/.kde4”, so that I can the selectively retrieve parts of it. And then, a month later, I remove “OLD/”.
Keeping your old /home unformatted while formatting root / is an important option. It is too bad you must understand how to do this manually and there is no selection to do this. I know there is no end to the ways one might install openSUSE, but if it was up to me, this would be another menu install option. “Clean Install - Keep /home intact”.
I just install boot to /. But I am thinking a noob would not have such a complex setup, but maybe? Maybe clonezilla may not even make sense to a noob? But it has saved me more then once.
Yeah see my sig, I upped 2 systems to 13.1 with no problems, glad I had the backups just in case.