I did a ‘dry’ (just not) [live]install on my laptop suse 11.1 to update to 11.3.
the report before installing stated that the /home partition is not going to be formatted but it did not say if this partition would be renewed as a new (empty) home partition or will it keep all my personal settings, hidden directories etc. intact.
I could not find documentation over this.
frits
It won’t be touched, be happy. System packages don’t contain anything that goes into /home. (For the pedantic: except an entry in the filesystems package to create the directory if it doesn’t exist, on new installations.)
I did a ‘dry’ (just not) [live]install on my laptop suse 11.1 to update to 11.3.
the report before installing stated that the /home partition is not going to be formatted but it did not say if this partition would be renewed as a new (empty) home partition or will it keep all my personal settings, hidden directories etc. intact.
I could not find documentation over this.
frits
I would like to throw in my 02. cents in agreement with ken_yap that doing a clean install, but NOT doing a format to a separate /home partition works like a champ, preserving many many of your settings. Doing an openSUSE “upgrade” in this manner is highly recommended.
The only issues I have seen have to do with actual program versions you have loaded before you do the upgrade. By that I mean, if you say had a newer version of Amarok loaded in openSUSE 11.1 than comes with openSUSE 11.3, the app may not work until you either A) Upgrade your Amaork version in openSUSE 11.3 to the same or higher as you had originally loaded in openSUSE 11.1 OR B) Find and delete the previous configuration file, thus forcing the application to start afresh with its configuration and not retaining your old one.
Such a problem is possible when upgrading a desktop beyond the version included with the newer version of openSUSE you are installing. So that you know what might happen, but again, What you say you are doing is the way to do it.
Thank You,
I also like to back up all of my /etc/.conf , /etc/hosts, /etc/sudoers, server files in /var or /srv, etc. before I do a clean install. At the least you can you use those to save time and/or troubleshoot configuration issues. If you’re running server services Apache, MySQL, etc. then you should have been backing up those files in /var anyway but just in case.
On 2010-11-17 20:36, tararpharazon wrote:
>
> I also like to back up all of my /etc/.conf , /etc/hosts,
> /etc/sudoers, server files in /var or /srv, etc. before I do a clean
> install.
You should backup everything - thus if the new system does not work you can
restore everything.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
Thanks
Of course I will make a backup. No risk taken, Just wanted to know what a new install would do.
frits