On 04/23/2014 08:59 AM, Benjamin Draxlbauer wrote:
Thanks Anton for the clarification with regard to scripting ;) If i find a linux club around i will try to update my scripting abilities but at the moment i need a way to start my system! I am still quite unsure if an upgrade via the installation medium (live usb stick) is not to brutal for me, because still i do not want to reset my whole system at this point (it took me a long time to set it up in the way i have it now ;) ) Is there a way to reinstall only the basic system settings and leaving all the other stuff (like installed packages and all my profiles and individualized stuff) untouched? Like a "system-repair" or to set back the system?
Benjamin: I subscribe to the list. There is no reason to cc me when you reply to the list and many consider it impolite. At the very least its redundant and can be confusing when figuring out which message to reply to :-) Best not to fall into the habit. I occasionally hose my system. Despite what John says, I make many mistakes. People who are wiling to do that have to live with such. The Rescue option on the distribution DVD is a godsend[1], boot from it, then chroot and you are in your basic system as if you had booted there and can clean up. I'm uncertain about the wording of you question, but one spin I can put on it the answer is YES. Or rather YES-BUT. The BUT is that you need to have /home on a separate partition. All the user-specific stuff lives there, so when you do a reinstall you tell the installer not to format that partition but to treat it as /home in the new installation. The 'whole disk as one partition' is a MS-DOS/MS-Windows habit that is quite disjoint from UNIX/Linux practices[2]. Having a separate 'home' partition so that user setting survive upgrades and re-installations is normal practice. If you don't do it, then you'll have to find some way to back up your settings. Nothing in this thread so far meads me to believe that your problem with the startup script could not be fixed by using the Rescue facility. However that is predicated on your skills and understanding being up to it, and your confusion over shell programming and few other items make me wonder if a wipe/reformat and a re-installation might not be simplest. That way we can be more sure of a solid baseline and you can be sure of what you install. I would not add things like LDAP before you have an adequate understanding of how to configure things so as not to hose your system. Unless, that is, you are setting out to learn by repeated installation. In which case you better keep extensive and detailed notes, as the tedium of the re-installation often causes personal forgetfulness. The 'leaving all the installed stuff' is not really an option. The best you might hope for is, in Repair/chroot mode, to use zypper to reinstall various packages, but you will need to now which ones. The 'it took a long time to set it up the way it is now' raises a few ironic laughs, doesn't it? In reality, all the key system config lives under /etc. Well, OK there may be a few maverick subsystems that fail to follow that convention, but I can't think of any at the moment, not any I use but YMMV. In the past I've reconstructed systems by copying from a backup of /etc. be careful with that, though, it may be that you are copying back your errors, so don't copy back wholesale. Check what the differences are between the re-installed system config and your copy and make sure what you are copying back is something you understand and want. [1] I use the term 'godsend' in the vernacular and not literally and mean no insult to any Atheists on the list by implying that the use of openSuse Rescue requires belief in a deity. [2] Though I wonder if large scale adoption of BtrFS might change this. -- Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate. Sun-tzu, The Art of War. Emptiness and Fullness -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org