I am wanting to replace Mint Felicia with SUSE 11.2 but don’t want to loose all of my personal files. Is there a way to just replace the OS and not mess with anything else?
If you have a separate /home, you should be alright… otherwise, you’ll lose both system files and personal files. Either way, whether you have a separate /home or not, you should create a backup of your personal files, just in case.
Good luck!
haydentown wrote:
>
> I am wanting to replace Mint Felicia with SUSE 11.2 but don’t want to
> loose all of my personal files. Is there a way to just replace the OS
> and not mess with anything else?
You could easily do that if your /home directory is in a separate partition.
If so, at install time, select that partition (do NOT format it!!) and set
the mount point to /home.
If not, you should back up your files and when you install suse, create a
separate partition /home, so you can preserve your files next time you
upgrade.
I hope it helps.
-G-
I’m not sure of that. Can I set it up that way in Mint? If I get what you’re saying, I would mount SUSE in the same partition as my /home directory? Will this also save my emails (Thunderbird), Firefox favorites, etc.? Thanks for the quick response!
Mint could be configures withe a separate home partition. I don’t know what mint default install does. Suse defaults with a separate home partition.
Just to be clear any partition can be mounted on the Linux file system. Suse by default creates a separate partition just for user data. It is then mounted on the file system as /home. And that is where your personal data (emails and settings) go. If that partition is not provided ten /home gets created on the root partition also known as /.
When installing new OS’s normally the root partition (/) gets reformatted. This is so no left over bits and pieces of the old OS will interfer with the new clean install.
If you are replacing the old OS then it is normal to install the new OS on the same partition as the old OS ie root. If you do not have a separate home partition then all your data gets over written.
So If you are unsure of the partitioning of Mint please open a console (command line) window and type
fdisk -l (note:that is a lower case L not a one)
And post the output here. Then we can tell you more about how to proceed.
I attempted to install, but chickened out when it came to disk setup! Here’s how my hard drive is currently partitioned:
sda2 /,/dev/.static/dev boot
sda3 extended
sda 5 /home
sda1 linux swap
Now, am I going to reformat and mount the new OS to sda2 in order to save my old /home on sda5? Does /home really contain all of my emails, settings, Firefox Favorites, etc. I can’t find any folders for these things when I look at my “Home” folder in File Manager. As a separate user, my wife also has her own “Home” folder as well as emails, etc. Will her stuff also be in the /home partition? If I loose her stuff, I’m dead! Thanks again for your quick responses and helpfullness.
All those details are mostly hidden in the hidden file under /home/username
Eg:
.thunderbird
.mozilla
gogalthorp wrote:
> Suse by default creates a separate partition just for user data. It is
> then mounted on the file system as /home.
!?? Since when? I do not ever recall having a suggestion of creating a
separate partition when one does a new install.
That would mean that the installer creates new partitions automatically…
Does it?
I always have to point the partitioner to mount my /home partition as /home,
but I might have been missing something all this time.
I am very puzzled by these comments.
Cheers
-G-
haydentown wrote:
> I attempted to install, but chickened out when it came to disk setup!
I know the feeling 
> Here’s how my hard drive is currently partitioned:
>
> sda2 /,/dev/.static/dev boot
> sda3 extended
> sda 5 /home
> sda1 linux swap
> Now, am I going to reformat and mount the new OS to sda2 in order to
> save my old /home on sda5?
Yes, that sounds OK, because your /home data is in sda5, make sure that you
do NOT format that partition, just mount it as /home.
When you are asked for the user names, use the same names as before and the
installer will say that the folders have been found, and whether to change
ownership. Reply “yes”.
> Does /home really contain all of my emails,
I think it should.
> I can’t find any folders for these
> things when I look at my “Home” folder in File Manager. As a separate
> user, my wife also has her own “Home” folder as well as emails, etc.
There are hidden folders in each /home/user_name/ which are named with a
preceding dot, like .mozilla, .kde4, etc. and contain your settings and some
of your data (in KDE emails, the addressbook and calendar for instance).
The data might be there, but whether kmail will read your old messages by
default will depend on what mailer you were using before.
I think that some distros (kubuntu?) use .kde to store kde defauls, some use
…kde4 so things might not be found automatically. That is not a big problem,
though.
You need to set in dolphin or konqueror: Show hidden files to see the hidden
files and folder.
> Will her stuff also be in the /home partition? If I loose her stuff, I’m
> dead! Thanks again for your quick responses and helpfullness.
Yes, it shoud be in /home/her_username
Good luck!
-G-
By default if you do nothing to change it and there is sufficient free space on the drive Suse installer will create 3 partitions mounted as swap, root, and home. You can of course over ride this but that is the default if installing into free space. If you have pre formated or if all the space is all ready partitioned then you are asked what you want to do.
gogalthorp wrote:
> By default if you do nothing to change it and there is sufficient free
> space on the drive Suse installer will create 3 partitions mounted as
> swap, root, and home.
Thanks for confirming this, that is good news.
I have a couple of quesitons, if you do not mind.
Do you know since which version this has been so?
What is the default size for / ?
I guess that swap is still twice the RAM and /home is the rest of the disk?
Cheers
-G-
I think that the default (recommended) size for / is relative to the drive oS is being installed on. For example, my laptop has a 250GB drive… the recommended size for / was 20GB. That’s a little big as far as I’m concerned… with other distros, the most I ever used was 15GB.
Yes, swap is twice the size of RAM with the remainder for /home.