On Wed, 28 Mar 2007, Sorin Peste wrote:-

Hi,

After running with SUSE 10.1 for a while I've decided it's time to upgrade to openSUSE 10.2. What I'd like to do is a fresh 10.2 install while keeping all my /home files (they are on a separate partition). But I can't seem to get the installer to leave that partition alone. My 80-gig hard disk is partitioned as follows:

sdb1: 1.5GB Linux swap sdb2: 20GB Linux (reiserfs) / sdb3: 53GB Linux (reiserfs) /home

<Snip>

I don't know what to do. I'd like to start fresh without losing my files, if possible. Can I accomplish that without moving an awful lot of files to another storage?

Start the installer and when the installer gets to the "Installation Settings" page: 1, click on "Partitioning"; 2, select "Create Custom Partition Setup" and click next; 3, select "Custom Partitioning (for experts)" and click next; 4, click on the "Expert.." button and select "Import Mount Points from existing /etc/fstab"; 5, when the installer finds the correct /etc/fstab[0], accept the choice; 6, click on the partition that is to be / and then click edit[1]; 7, click on the "Format" radio button, ensure it's going to create the correct file system, and then click "OK"; 8, click "Accept" to get back to the "Installation Settings" page. After that, you can proceed with the installation and the installer with leave your files alone[2]. [0] when you're booting at least two different versions of Linux there may be more than one. [1] If you're feeling a little lazy, you can also double-click the entries and it'll pop up the "Edit partition" dialogue box. [2] Well, that's with the exception of maybe changing the UID when you add all the users. Regards, David Bolt -- Member of Team Acorn checking nodes at 50 Mnodes/s: http://www.distributed.net/ RISCOS 3.11 | SUSE 10.0 32bit | SUSE 10.1 32bit | openSUSE 10.2 32bit RISCOS 3.6 | SUSE 10.0 64bit | SUSE 10.1 64bit | openSUSE 10.2 64bit TOS 4.02 | SUSE 9.3 32bit | | openSUSE 10.3a1 32bit -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Sorin Peste wrote:

Hi,

After running with SUSE 10.1 for a while I've decided it's time to upgrade to openSUSE 10.2. What I'd like to do is a fresh 10.2 install while keeping all my /home files (they are on a separate partition). But I can't seem to get the installer to leave that partition alone. My 80-gig hard disk is partitioned as follows:

sdb1: 1.5GB Linux swap sdb2: 20GB Linux (reiserfs) / sdb3: 53GB Linux (reiserfs) /home

The installer thinks I should make sdb3 an 'extended partition' and then create two additional partitions (sdb4 and sdb5) on it, for housing / and /home, respectively. If I try to alter this setup I can't make it leave sdb3 as it is...

If I decide to request a partition scheme by using sdb2 and sdb3 allocated space, it then thinks I should delete (not just format) those partitions and create identical new ones in their place! Even if I set it up to not format sdb3, it still lists both partitions as being up for deletion and re-creation.

I don't know what to do. I'd like to start fresh without losing my files, if possible. Can I accomplish that without moving an awful lot of files to another storage?

Thanks, Sorin

Firstly, having experience of upgrading many different systems with many different OSs I would not even consider starting without thoroughly backing up configuration and user data. An upgrade can be a very exotic way of turning your machine into a potential paperweight, and one should have a route to get back to where you were before you started before you start. I admit to be being surprised about the partitioner attempting to rebuild the partitions. Did you select upgrade/update an existing installation? This usually leaves the current partitions alone. If it cannot find the existing installation there is something very wrong. I am just going through the process of upgrading a box from SuSE 9.3 to 10.2 now.... I have so far found that the following got torched..... syslog (configuration file deleted) the samba configuration (configuration file rewritten) courier-imap (deleted) otrs (??) CUPS configuration (but at least a warning was given) squirrelmail (deleted but not replaced) and do not know what else I will find.... I was not surprised about samba (YaST seems to maul the samba config files anyway), and I expect further work will be required before everyone thing functions as before. With backup config files I have so far managed to restore syslog and samba to a working state. I have so far downloaded, compiled and installed the courier-imap modules, and with some of the backed up configuration files got it going. Apparent changes in the Apache Perl configuration meant that otrs took out Apache. Had to uninstall otrs, and will do what I should have done some time ago and install new version. As the MySQL contents have been dumped and backed up this should not be a problem. Also found squid would not load (could not find port), latter simply fixed but irritating. Without such a backup in place this process of restoring functionality would be much more difficult. To be honest upgrading too many times can cause problems, a machine I had upgraded through 8.0->8.1->8.2->9.0->9.1 started doing some very odd thing when I moved to 9.2. (Eventually requiring a re-install from scratch). BTW I wish that a list of discontinued applications was available so one can access the impact of an upgrade beforehand.