I’m upgrading to 11.3 (from 11.2) and will be keeping my current home partition. Will this keep my browser favorites?
Also, I read somewhere that in order for things to work properly after upgrading (without reformatting my /home partition) that I would have to keep the same username AND user UID…? Is that true? How do I make sure I have the same UID if so…?
I purposely set up a seperate home partition so that when I changed distro’s or upgraded I would still have my files, and some settings intact. (I switched distros a lot when I first started using Linux.) I set up a “bin” folder (in home folder) that had a couple of programs I had downloaded to keep from having to set up and configure everything all over again every time I felt like changing distro’s as well…
Any advice, as always, is much appreciated. Thank you.
During the partitioning, there was an option to use the partitioning from the previous system. I think that came when I went to edit the suggested partition table. I set “/home” to “Do Not Format”, but set the root partition to “Format”.
A little later, when about to setup users, I think there was a question about password encryption. I chose “des” for backward compatibility. At that point, I was offered the choice of using the “/etc/passwd” from the previous install. I don’t think I had to select “des” for that - it probably would have worked with any choice other than accepting the default.
Hey - I did the upgrade last night. The 11.3 live cd actually assumed that I didn’t want to format my home partition. It used the existing swap partition, formatted my old root, and kept my home as my home.
It was awesome. Very very easy.
As far as my browser though…Firefox stayed, including all bookmarks… But Opera, and Chrome weren’t even installed anymore. Not sure if I installed those using Yast, or downloaded. VLC wasn’t there anymore, either.
The programs I had in the ‘bin’ folder I created on my desktop (home folder) stayed. I think from now on I’ll just download browsers to that directory. (The other programs I have in there are IDE’s.)
Overall, though it was the easiest process. Probably b/c the partitions were already there, but still.
As robin_listas wrote - this is common behaviour. VLC, Chrome and Opera are not installed by default in openSUSE. I still recommend to reinstall them the regular way after the initial install instead of doing “local” installs in some ~/bin-folder, because then your package manager will manage updates and bugfixes for you. In the case of VLC, Chrome and Opera that will be a matter of seconds anyway - actually I envy you: running a digital audio workstation, I have to reinstall several dozens of applications after upgrading my system.
So all of my settings (bookmarks, themes, etc) for my programs get stored in my /home folder (on my home partition)? If that’s the case I’ll just use the repos whenever possible instead of downloading to my ‘custom’ folder…
Absolutely correct. Those things are stored within the “hidden folders” (and files) in your /home. For example your Firefox-bookmarks are stored in /home/a2ice/.mozilla.
On 2011-02-25 04:36, gropiuskalle wrote:
>
> “a2ice” Wrote:
>> So all of my settings (bookmarks, themes, etc) for my programs get
>> stored in my /home folder (on my home partition)?
>
> Absolutely correct. Those things are stored within the “hidden folders”
> (and files) in your /home. For example your Firefox-bookmarks are stored
> in /home/a2ice/.mozilla.
The exception are global settings, ie, system settings: they go into /etc.
Or global data, like an mysql database, which goes under /var.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)