Paul, On Sunday 17 April 2005 09:27, Paul Cartwright wrote:

On Sun April 17 2005 12:00 pm, Randall R Schulz wrote:

...

...

I have a question about the /home partition. I have a separate /home mounted now with 9.2 and I fresh0-installed 9.3 to a new partition. If I just add the /home mountpoint to /etc/fstab and reboot, will it cause me any problems ?? that would save my /home/login/Mail but would it have any effect on KDE, like /home/login/.kde files??? I only started using SUSE at 9.1 and did an upgrade to 9.2 so I'm kinda new at this.. and I have 2 logins that I need to worry about, mine and my wifes.. and she isn't BIG on changes :)

I don't anticipate a problem in my setup since I'm already running KDE 3.4 and that's what's supplied with SuSE Professional 9.3. In general, I've found that KDE is not so robust about running newer versions with older settings and configuration files, but the upset is usually minimal (toolbar customizations are often lost, e.g.).

-- Paul Cartwright

Randall Schulz

On Sunday 17 April 2005 9:00 am, Randall R Schulz wrote:

I can see both sides of this issue, but consider, too, that a clean install also frees you from a lot of cruft that tends to build up in a long-running installation. I don't know about you, but as conservative as I try to be about trying new things, there's a certain amount of stuff I've installed that turned out to be buggy or unuseful. And for those things that are not installed via RPM, it can be pretty hard to eradicate it all. A fresh install guarantees a clean break.

Naturally, I'm absolutely not talking about overwriting your existing installation. If you must to that, then at least be sure to back up those file systems / disk partitions that will be overwritten. If possible (based on space requirements), mirror the key configuration files on a CD or DVD first (so you don't need to run your backup / restore software to access them).

I both look forward to and feel trepidation about the 9.3 installation I'm planning now. I'm buying a new hard disk to host it and I'll just bite the bullet about replicating all the essential add-ons and customizations I've done since I performed my SuSE 9.1 installation (that was done from scratch, too, because of an untimely disk crash that wiped out a then-young 9.0 installation). My /home directory is a separate partition in my current setup. In the new setup, I think I'll devote a partition to /usr/local, too. On my current system /usr/local already contains over 2 GB of stuff I've added.

Right, your points are all valid and I do keep /home on a separate partition and did backup the entire system before upgrading. It really boils down to the two choices full of trade offs; 1) Upgrade.... deal with the issues I've pointed out, but other than the Perl CPAN issue, most of the others are at least identified for you (Yast is great, it leaves you a log in /var/log/YaST2 of the config differences /var/log/YaST2/config_diff_2005_04_16.log 2) Install fresh... deal with reconfiguring and retweaking all of your settings in the various /etc config files (assuming you retain a separate /home partition and restore your /usr/local stuff. Either way seems more painful to me than it should be. I really hate to use Windows as an example, but OS upgrades in Windows did not break a bunch of stuff on me like the Linux upgrades seem to do.

The only way I can think of to deal with this is to keep a log of software (especially 3rd-party and non-RPM software) added to your system subsequent to installation of the vendor's distribution. It's also important to record lower-level things like disk partitions, Webmin configuration changes, NTP and DNS server addresses, IP addresses, virtual adaptors as well as user IDs and so on. When in doubt, jot it down.

Well, best I've come up with so far is to use the locate command to identify the modules that were installed in 5.8.5, e.g., helphand:~ # locate /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.5 > perl5.8.5 I'm comparing that manually against a similar list for the ones I've already installed for 5.8.6 helphand:~ # locate /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.6 > perl5.8.6 At least I now know which ones I still need to install, but I still wish there were a better, more automated, way to do this. Scott -- POPFile, the OpenSource EMail Classifier http://popfile.sourceforge.net/ Linux 2.6.11.4-20a-default x86_64

On Sunday 17 April 2005 10:29 am, Paul Cartwright wrote:

just curious, when you say backup entire system, what do you mean, and what did you use?

I use two different ones, dar and backup2l . Just recently started using dar and may switch to it entirely, just haven't decided. As for what I mean by backing up the entire system, just what I said, dar creates a backup of everything on the system for me. It's on your SuSE CD/DVD, check it out. I have it dump the backup slices to a networked Buffalo Linkstation. Every once and a while I burn DVDs of the slices.

usr/local ?? help me out here, I have been backing up /etc and /home, what do I need from /usr/local ? ?

Well behaved applications that you may install off the net or elsewhere will generally install themselves to /usr/local so by preserving /usr/local, you will not have to reinstall all those applications after a fresh install.

...

  Either way seems more painful to me than it should be. I really hate to use Windows as an example, but OS upgrades in Windows did not break a bunch of stuff on me like the Linux upgrades seem to do.

um, well... I beg to differ... XP SP1 broke a bunch of stuff on my setup. I've had to back out a few others in my time, but lets not talk M$ today :)

:) OK, agreed. No win talk today <g> Scott -- POPFile, the OpenSource EMail Classifier http://popfile.sourceforge.net/ Linux 2.6.11.4-20a-default x86_64

On Sunday 17 April 2005 11:37 am, Paul Cartwright wrote:

On Sun April 17 2005 1:49 pm, Scott Leighton wrote:

...

  I use two different ones, dar and backup2l . Just recently started using dar and may switch to it entirely, just haven't decided. As for what I mean by backing up the entire system, just what I said, dar creates a backup of everything on the system for me. It's on your SuSE CD/DVD, check it out. I have it dump the backup slices to a networked Buffalo Linkstation. Every once and a while I burn DVDs of the slices.

would that be kdar ?? I have that installed.. I've been using rsync for /etc/ and /home, maybe I'll add /usr/local to that AND do a complete backup.. nothing like a little redundancy ;)

Kdar uses dar, it just wraps it in a nice KDE GUI. Under the hood, it is using dar. I actually did use Kdar to initially create the backup script, but I haven't used it since. I just modified the Kdar generated script so I could run it in a cron job easily.

...

...

usr/local ?? help me out here, I have been backing up /etc and /home, what do I need from /usr/local ? ?

  Well behaved applications that you may install off the net or elsewhere will generally install themselves to /usr/local so by preserving /usr/local, you will not have to reinstall all those applications after a fresh install.

I see mozilla under /usr/local but mozilla-Firefox got installed into my home directory... weird.

Yes, it can be confusing. Some things install to /opt, some to /usr/local and some to your /home directory. I haven't quite figured out the rationale for all those cases, the LSB has a FHS that covers the subject http://www.pathname.com/fhs/ but I never could Grok the subtle distinction between /opt and /usr/local Scott -- POPFile, the OpenSource EMail Classifier http://popfile.sourceforge.net/ Linux 2.6.11.4-20a-default x86_64

On Sun April 17 2005 4:42 pm, Randall R Schulz wrote:

directory). And it's four as in 1.0.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3 ... sheesh!). I always remember to click "Custom" and include the Developer's Tools, but I never seem to notice the install directory button below. with XP Mozilla installed Mozilla & firefox under the same /mozilla folder, I guess the Linux developers had a better idea:)

-- Paul Cartwright Registered Linux user # 367800 X-Request-PGP: http://home.comcast.net/~p.cartwright/wsb/key.asc

On Sun April 17 2005 4:57 pm, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

directory). And it's four as in 1.0.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3 ... sheesh!). I always remember to click "Custom" and include the Developer's Tools, but I never seem to notice the install directory button below.

A simpler solution *might* be to use SuSE's rpm's via Yast2 or apt ?? yes, if they were the "latest" versions of Mozilla, which they aren't.

-- Paul Cartwright Registered Linux user # 367800 X-Request-PGP: http://home.comcast.net/~p.cartwright/wsb/key.asc

* Anders Johansson [04-17-05 16:27]:

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/mozilla/1.7.7

That's the latest, as far as I can see, and the latest should always be in /pub/projects/mozilla shortly after it's released

/var/cache/apt/archives/mozilla_1.7.7-1_i586.rpm -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org HOG # US1244711 Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery

* Paul Cartwright [04-17-05 17:07]:

it just seems ( to me ) that when i try to do a YAST software install, and select Mozilla, the version is behind whatever is on the Mozilla site.. NOW, TODAY, it may be up to date.

*seems* the key word here. Moz and Firefox/bird/* has been utd for some time now, although it does not do "nightlies". And apt installs automagically for me when the package is available. I read the cron email and notice several *newer* packages almost every day. It has updated flawlessly even the KDE version updates, only causing concern when KDE changes their packaging so apts are not where they were previous. And then I see complaints on this list and manually add the new/different packages. -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535 http://wahoo.no-ip.org @ http://counter.li.org HOG # US1244711 Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery

On Monday 18 April 2005 07:24, Randall R Schulz wrote:

Anders,

On Sunday 17 April 2005 14:24, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On Sunday 17 April 2005 23:11, Paul Cartwright wrote:

...

On Sun April 17 2005 4:57 pm, Patrick Shanahan wrote: ...

...

A simpler solution *might* be to use SuSE's rpm's via Yast2 or apt ??

yes, if they were the "latest" versions of Mozilla, which they aren't.

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/mozilla/1.7.7

That's the latest, as far as I can see, and the latest should always be in /pub/projects/mozilla shortly after it's released

Are these builds configured for GTK2 and XFS?

I assume you meant xft. Yes they are

* Randall R Schulz [04-17-05 15:50]:

...

The stupid-ass Firefox installer defaults to install in the current directory with which it was launched. I've installed probably four of them into my "/acquisitions" directory (it's a download catch-all directory). And it's four as in 1.0.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3 ... sheesh!). I always remember to click "Custom" and include the Developer's Tools, but I never seem to notice the install directory button below.

A simpler solution *might* be to use SuSE's rpm's via Yast2 or apt ?? -- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535

Hi Patrick, But they doesn't have 8.2s. Haven't had for some time. I find the install script from Mozilla works well, but, unless I'm missing something, you I have to manually re-do the KDE menu for each and ever user. Kind of a pain, esp. at the rate they keep updating Firefox. Another one yesterday. I know, I know, 9.3 will be here soon enough (for the rest of us). Maybe 9.3 will run at a decent speed on my old server. (9.1 didn't). My 2CW -- Jim Flanagan linuxjim@jjfiii.com

* Jim Flanagan [04-18-05 15:15]:

...

But they doesn't have 8.2s. Haven't had for some time. I find the install script from Mozilla works well, but, unless I'm missing something, you I have to manually re-do the KDE menu for each and ever user. Kind of a pain, esp. at the rate they keep updating Firefox.

Patrick Shanahan 04-08-05 You have no choice, if the rpm's are not provided, ie: old_package. But if you install in the same location each time, *why* would you have to re-do the KDE menu???? The executable *should* be in the same location.

-- Patrick Shanahan Registered Linux User #207535

Good question. I run the install script in the same location, but (I'm not at that machine right now so I can't check, /opt/firefox??) I think the script actually puts the install in a sub-directory. It keeps them all (since 1.0) in a seperate sub-directory. I assume this is in order to keep previus settings (bookmarks, themes etc) in order to import them after the new install. If I don't update the menu, the previous version still runs. Perhaps I'm not running the script from the correct location. -- Jim Flanagan linuxjim@jjfiii.com

On Sunday 17 April 2005 12:37 pm, Russ wrote:

I recently tried kdar and it seems to work for /home (thats all I tryed so far). Any comments on it as I only have a CDRW, no writeable DVD. Also if I backup with Kdar and go to 9.3 (on 9.1 now) will it restore?

The thing about Kdar/Dar is that you can backup to whatever you want, CD/DVD/Disk. Just configure the slice size appropriately and you're good to go (on the configure settings tab that the wizard gives you several steps into the create process, click the 'configure creation options' button and pick the 'Slicing' option, click the 'split archive' options and set your media type to the correct one, probably CDR (80 min). You can either output direct to CDR or to disk and later burn the slices to CDR using k3b or similar). If you backed up to disk, after the backup completes, burn the slices it created to the CDRW you have, you'll just have to use as many CD's as you have slices. Restores won't be a problem, but you will have to make sure to install Kdar when you move to 9.3 (assuming you are going to do a fresh install, if you upgrade, it should upgrade Kdar at the same time). Scott -- POPFile, the OpenSource EMail Classifier http://popfile.sourceforge.net/ Linux 2.6.11.4-20a-default x86_64