How do I upgrade safely?

[tlinux]

A few weeks ago I upgraded from Kubuntu 9.10 to 10.04. The process wiped out my settings and I never got it to work correctly. I lost my wireless internet connectivity and it's not simple to set up because of the chip my Dell notebook uses. It also wiped out a number of other settings that I had spend a lot of time choosing. I never got it to run well so I went back to 9.10.

If I were to upgrade again, are there any specific files I should save and reinstall after the upgrade to maintain my current settings? I believe there are lots of such files in /etc but I don't know which ones should be saved.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[vinnywright]

Hay @tlinux
I dont have an anser to your Q about specific files you should save and reinstall after the upgrade to maintain your current settings as it depends gratley on just what your trying to preserve.
a lot of user configs are in hiden files (files that start with a . ) in /home/you/
wile global configs could be in /etc or elsware.

I am cureus as to how you upgraded??

as I'v net upgraded evrey time sence 8.04 and never lost a custom config or seting exept for KDM startup splash and boot splash.

even my ndiswrapper installed wlan driver lasted thrugh 8.04,9.04 untill ath5k was relaced by ath9k and I let it start using that .


VINNY

[Fintan]

Well first of all I concur with vinny. There is no general recipe. I usually do a fresh install.
then use apt-on:
http://aptoncd.sourceforge.net/
for my packages.

But I would strongly suggest you make yourself separate /home and /data partitions.

This is a good idea if not for security reason then for lots of others.

You can easily do that with a parted magic live cd:
http://partedmagic.com/

you can find a lot of good docs. on partitioning here:
http://partedmagic.com/documentation/119-using-gparted.html

Hope that helps. :)

[tlinux]

Vinny,

It's been a few weeks since I tried to update, but as I now remember it, I got a pop up in 9.10 telling me of an upgrade and asking if I wanted to upgrade. I accepted. It installed but with all my settings messed up. I worked with it for a couple of days but couldn't get it set up to run satisfactorily so I downloaded Kubuntu 10.04 on another computer and burned it to a disc. Actually, I did this twice. I encountered errors when trying to install from these discs so finally I went back to Kubuntu 9.10 that I had on a disc sent to me from Kubuntu. That's what I'm running now. It took me several days to get it set up, get my wireless system connected, and get other settings to work as I wished.

Fintan,

What is the purpose of the partition? Are you saying that the data should be within its own partition? If so, are you also saying that /home should also be within its own partition or should it be within the partition containing the rest of Kubuntu?

Thanks for your comments.

[Fintan]

Are you saying that the data should be within its own partition? If so, are you also saying that /home should also be within its own partition

In a word: yes.

Should your OS go nuts or you want to reinstall, or just get a bad upgrade your settings (/home) and data are safe.

I have been doing this for over ten years (especially Data with windows).

[The Liquidator]

I agree 100% with Fintan. Whilst I wouldn't recommend it for a newcomer, once someone has decided to keep Linux a seprate home partition is absolutely the way to go. It makes upgrades less painful, and quicker as you don't need to reinstate your data. If you upgrade by way of fresh install, at the partitioning stage you simply tell the installer to not to format the home partition. Obviously you should still back up in case something goes wrong or there is user error.

One other point is that there are a number of significant changes that took place in kde between the launch of 9.10 and 10.04. My perception (although I have no scientific evidence of this) is that those who upgraded to kde 4.4 whilst running karmic do seem to have less grief upgrading to lucid than those who have not. It might be a good idea for you to upgrade your karmic to kde 4.4 first, to iron out any wrinkles and then do the lucid upgrade. If you go that route you following the kde upgrade you may find you have to install the package plasma-desktop.

http://www.kubuntu.org/news/kde-sc-4.4.2

HTH

[oshunluvr]

IMO: A separate /home partition should be the default install. It is with some distros.

[vinnywright]

Hummm yes .......I do have a sepret /home partition and I had upgraded KDE before the up to lucid.

partitions


vinny@desktop:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for vinny:

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x4b36bdea

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 570 4496 31543627+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 1 569 4570461 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda3 4497 7073 20699752+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 7074 24321 138544560 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 7074 24183 137436043+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 24184 24321 1108453+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris



sda3=/
sda5=/home

I'v ben using the sepret /home sceem for a long time so I tend to forget it's not standerd.

and tend to take KDE upgrades as soon as offerd ::)

VINNY