--- Donald Henson wrote: [..snip..]

As I understanf it, a "fresh" install replaces virtually everything but leaves the /home directories alone so that your data is saved. Is that a correct assumption?

That depends. You can instruct most Linux installers to leave partitions alone. However, in this instance, probably your assumption is correct, -- Thomas Adam __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/

On 10/26/2003 09:39 PM, Donald Henson wrote:

As I understand it, a "fresh" install replaces virtually everything but

AFAIK, a fresh install is totally fresh, fresh formatting and partitioning (if needed) of all hard disk. You can change that depending on your partitioning, needs, etc.

leaves the /home directories alone so that your data is saved. Is that a correct assumption?

If your home directories are on their own partition, you can tell the install program to mount that partition as home and not format, and it will obey you. Permissions may be all screwed on home though, as there will be no users until you add them to a fresh install, and I don't know if the new users would get a new home or if they would get their former home directories. The data, though, for sure would be saved. If you have a lot of users, though, getting home back in shape will still take quite a bit of work. If possible, add all users in the same order as before. It might help. -- Joe Morris New Tribes Mission Email Address: Joe_Morris@ntm.org Web Address: http://www.mydestiny.net/~joe_morris Registered Linux user 231871 God said, I AM that I AM. I say, by the grace of God, I am what I am.

On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 09:24:38 -0600, Stan Glasoe wrote

On Sunday 26 October 2003 08:53, Joe Morris (NTM) wrote:

...

On 10/26/2003 09:39 PM, Donald Henson wrote:

...

As I understand it, a "fresh" install replaces virtually everything but

AFAIK, a fresh install is totally fresh, fresh formatting and partitioning (if needed) of all hard disk. You can change that depending on your partitioning, needs, etc.

...

leaves the /home directories alone so that your data is saved. Is that a correct assumption?

If your home directories are on their own partition, you can tell the install program to mount that partition as home and not format, and it will obey you. Permissions may be all screwed on home though, as there will be no users until you add them to a fresh install, and I don't know if the new users would get a new home or if they would get their former home directories. The data, though, for sure would be saved. If you have a lot of users, though, getting home back in shape will still take quite a bit of work. If possible, add all users in the same order as before. It might help.

-- Joe Morris

Fresh install will only format the partitions you designate or those that are blank, unformatted before the install. Any formatted partitions are left as is. Same for an upgrade.

Separate /home directories will be preserved IF you don't EXPLICITLY format them. Otherwise they won't be touched. As for the users and permissions you will need to match their loginid and userid everytime you set them up in the new OS. By default SUSE seems to use userid 500 for the first user. If you set yourself up as the first user during install (after root) and use the same loginid and verify the same userid then you will be warned that you match what was on that ~/loginid-userid home partition. That new loginid and userid take possesion and permissions of that /home directory. Which is usually what you want.

Rolling over several hundereds or thousands of users needs a more automated approach but we were talking home systems right?

Stan

GAS I'm thinking of doing this at our school, ±700 users. I know about the 'newusers' command - is that the only way? TIA Darryl ---- Edgemead High School (Northern Suburbs, Cape Town) Office Tel +27215581132 Office Fax +27215584407 -- EHS uses: Open WebMail (http://openwebmail.org) Apache (http://www.apache.org) SuSE Linux 8.2 (http://www.suse.de; http://www.suse.com) ----

On 10/27/2003 04:01 PM, darryl penny wrote:

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I'm thinking of doing this at our school, ±700 users. I know about the 'newusers' command - is that the only way?

Joe Morris's reply:

Unless your 8.2 is giving you problems, I would definitely go for an upgrade (You do have home on a separate partition I hope). I just did this last weekend (8.0 to 8.2), and the upgrade worked much better than expected, and saved me a lot of config time. And that was an gcc change from 2.9.5 to 3.3. I think SuSE does a great (but not perfect) job in the install program, and if you don't rush, but read about your choices if they are not known, look in the advanced buttons for finer control, you would be ahead, IMHO.

-- Joe Morris New Tribes Mission

/* Second reply follows: */ Brian Jackson's reply:

I'm thinking of doing this at our school, ±700 users. I know about the 'newusers' command - is that the only way?

All you need to do is copy YOUR users section from /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow and place them in the same files on the newly upgraded system. Don't create a user during hte upgrade and just login as root and append your users onto the new /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow file.

If you've upgraded and KEPT your /home directory, all you have to do is >modify the proper files and all the users are back. You don't have to use any >funky commands and recreate people. That's WAY TOO SLOW.

If you have +/- 700 users I'd assume that you would be using some sort of network user management system, like NIS. Might want to look into adding something like that in the future, makes adding all those users to multiple systems a snap.

good luck, brian

Thanks, Joe and Brian. Whew! I have /home on a separate partition. Been considering NIS for sometime, guess now's the time to do it. I have no issues with our 8.2 install, all credit to SuSE, but keeping the distro current is likely a good idea. I'm going to wait for our year end vac (9 Dec) and then pop in the CD. ;) HAG1 (Have A Good one!) Darryl

On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 16:23:03 +0100, McTrex wrote

If you have the time, I'd use the time to 9 Dec to read up on LDAP instead of NIS, and try to migrate all your users to a central LDAP repository in combination with central home directories.

Then rollout SuSE 9 as an LDAP client and you'll be very happy with your centralized administration and 'roaming profiles'.

Marco, If I do this, I would prefer, (h/ware constraints), to migrate users to LDAP on the 8.2 server 1st, then backup, then upgrade the *same* server to 9.0, then get up from my knees and dance a jig. Sometime next year a machine will be free for a backup server. HAG1 (Have A Good One!) Darryl /* trimmed thread follows: */

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I'm thinking of doing this at our school, ±700 users. I know about the 'newusers' command - is that the only way?

Joe Morris's reply:

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Unless your 8.2 is giving you problems, I would definitely go for an upgrade...

...

Brian Jackson's reply:

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All you need to do is copy YOUR users section from /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow and place them in the same files on the newly upgraded ... ... network user management system, like NIS...

On Sun, 2003-10-26 at 08:24, Stan Glasoe wrote:

Rolling over several hundereds or thousands of users needs a more automated approach but we were talking home systems right?

Stan

Yes. Two users. How automated can that be? :-) Don Henson

On Sunday 26 October 2003 14:39, Donald Henson wrote:

On Sat, 2003-10-25 at 22:07, Joe Morris (NTM) wrote:

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On 10/26/2003 10:18 AM, Mike wrote:

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Is there any "conventional wisdom" regarding upgrades of installed systems from 8.2 to 9.0? Better to wipe and start again, or does the upgrade process work well?

I have done 2 upgrades, the first was 7.3 to 8.0 here at home, and it weny very well. The second was just last weekend, 8.0 to 8.2 on the server at work. I went very carefully on this one, as it has been upgraded a lot, was running a lot of services, running software RAID 1, several users, etc. Trying to make sure I didn't make any careless errors, reading things very carefully, and it also worked very well. It dealt with some third party packages, etc., allowing me quite a bit of control in the process, and even left my kernel alone (since I had already installed the latest 8.2 kernel while it was still 8.0). It was quite a bit of work, but much less than it would have been to get back to where it was with 8.0. I wouldn't hesitate to do an upgrade again, but only if the amount of configuring would make it worth it. A fresh install is very nice to 'clean up the system', but the time it takes to tweak a lot of new programs made the upgrade for me a time-saver, and I am very pleased with the results. YMMV. I have NO experience with 9.0 yet. ;-)

As I understanf it, a "fresh" install replaces virtually everything but leaves the /home directories alone so that your data is saved. Is that a correct assumption?

Maybe, but you have to double check which partitions it is erasing, as it erased my home one and kept my root one when I did it once.

Don Henson

I'd like to thank everyone who responded to my question. The gist of the comments seems to be very careful when doing a fresh install. Sage advice. Don Henson