Preparing to upgrade my tricked out version of Kubuntu with BTRFS

[TwoFistedJustice]

Thank you jlittle ! That helps a lot.

Even though I took copious notes and wrote whole tutorials that go into excruciating detail, now that I have to use my own notes and tutorials, I see that they were neither sufficiently copious nor sufficiently detailed!

The installer always wants to install to "@" and "@home". (One can hack the Python to change these, and posters here have done it, but it get's annoying to do it every time.) So I keep those names free for fresh installs. To change the names one has to fix up grub, and /etc/fstab, and I suspect you're up with those.

More generally, I organize subvolumes by how I want them backed up. I don't want to back up browser and other caches at all, so they go in a @cache subvolume; this one trick speeds incremental backups a lot. Your @programs and @tardis fit that principle nicely.

[jlittle]

I think all I have to do is treat it like I'm setting up a second distro, maybe create new subvolumes @ku24 and @ku24_home and install to those. Then set them as default in grub...

The installer always wants to install to "@" and "@home". (One can hack the Python to change these, and posters here have done it, but it get's annoying to do it every time.) So I keep those names free for fresh installs. To change the names one has to fix up grub, and /etc/fstab, and I suspect you're up with those.

More generally, I organize subvolumes by how I want them backed up. I don't want to back up browser and other caches at all, so they go in a @cache subvolume; this one trick speeds incremental backups a lot. Your @programs and @tardis fit that principle nicely.

[TwoFistedJustice]

It's upgrade time. I've been putting it off. I might need a little help upgrading over the mods I did to my system.

I'm struggling to come up with a meaningful question. I have simply forgotten too much from disuse.

Back in 2023 I expanded on oshunluvr 's work with multi-booting with BTRFS. When it came time to upgrade, unsurprisingly, the automatic upgrade failed on my system.

The short short version is that I have my system distributed over several btrfs subvolumes on sda3, with root, home, dotfiles, non-dkg applications all sitting on their own subvolumes.

I put a a full write up with scripts is on github

Overall my system worked really well. There were no major hiccups after the initial set up. It just worked. Then I got really tired of sitting at my desk looking at a screen and haven't even looked at it in almost 2 years. I actively avoid going near computers now.

I believe I also removed Snap with Schwarzer Kater's script.

I am considering going back to a vanilla installation to spare myself the trouble of setting it all up again. But just in case, I want to try to upgrade without wiping my system completely.

Since my system is configured for multi-booting different flavors all from the same partition, I think all I have to do is treat it like I'm setting up a second distro, maybe create new subvolumes @ku24 and @ku24_home and install to those. Then set them as default in grub...

However, through disuse, I have forgotten much. So I might be (probably am) wrong.

Can anyone provide any insight into how to do this?



My system in a nutshell:

Drive Designation	Filesystem Type	Size	name	label
sda	GPT partition table
sda1	FAT32	100-550 MiB	EFI System Partition	EFI
sda2	swap	1.5x	swap	swap
sda3	btrfs	remainder	/	/

My BTRFS subvolumes pulled directly from Konsole

hoo@ares:~$ sudo btrfs subvolume list /
ID 256 gen 1089802 top level 5 path @ku
ID 257 gen 1089802 top level 5 path @ku_home
ID 275 gen 1089705 top level 5 path @data
ID 276 gen 1089802 top level 5 path @dotfiles
ID 277 gen 1089801 top level 5 path @programs
ID 278 gen 1089802 top level 5 path @tardis
ID 519 gen 1080914 top level 257 path @ku_home/hoo/snapshots/r-update-240418
ID 520 gen 1080914 top level 257 path @ku_home/hoo/snapshots/h-update-240418
​

Purpose of each subvolume ( all on sda3)

@ku
Kubuntu root

@ku_home
Kubuntu Home

@data:

for Documents, Downloads, and all such folders normally found in /home/$USER excepting Desktop.

@dotfiles:

dot and rc configuration files that you want to have in common for all distros. .bash_aliases might fall into this category.

@programs:

Add-on applications you want to use in all distros. Generally stuff that isn't installable through dpkg

@tardis:

For personal memories and such going back several decades. It's my time travel directory.