24.4 reinstall. What do I need to note from current install (users, drives, permissions) etc

[new666uk]

After continual graphic glitches in my currrent install, I'm going to bite and reinstall.

Currently I have a few physical drives mounted (ex my Windows box) with all my movies and TV episodes.

Is it worth/ possible do save info like the users, permission and the drive structure to ease setup of the reinstall or is it literally a case of starting all over again from scratch? The only additional programmes I need to install will be plex and maybe jellyfin.

I recall setting up plex permissions was a pita so really hoping I can salvage from the old install.

Thanks
paul

[barfly]

I always have a spare copy of my custom /etc/fstab file in a backup drive, also custom configuration for Thunderbird. I also copy my complete home folder into a backup drive. Take a snapshot of my mythtv settings, as well as the firmware and drivers for my TV card. Any esoteric hardware such as my pool monitoring smart device for chlorine and acid levels drivers. It takes me a full day to do a re-install, so if you haven't done it before, give yourself two days.

[new666uk]

thanks. Probably only the fstab that I need then, the rest is pretty stock / off the shelf stuff. Can I simple replace the old fstab in the new install? Is it really as simple as drag and drop?

[barfly]

thanks. Probably only the fstab that I need then, the rest is pretty stock / off the shelf stuff. Can I simple replace the old fstab in the new install? Is it really as simple as drag and drop?

Unless you have changed your hardware, just drop it in.

[new666uk]

Super, looks like a rainy day sort of task.

[jlittle]

thanks. Probably only the fstab that I need then, the rest is pretty stock / off the shelf stuff. Can I simple replace the old fstab in the new install? Is it really as simple as drag and drop?

If the reinstall recreates the file systems, they will have different UUIDs, and if the old fstab has UUIDs it will not match them. (A reason not to use UUIDs, but few agree with me that UUIDs are to be avoided.) The reinstall would have to avoid formatting the file systems.

[barfly]

If the reinstall recreates the file systems, they will have different UUIDs, and if the old fstab has UUIDs it will not match them. (A reason not to use UUIDs, but few agree with me that UUIDs are to be avoided.) The reinstall would have to avoid formatting the file systems.

@Jlittle - you are absolutely right of course - I just copy the external drive listings part of the fstab, not the root drive, home, efi and swap partitions, I append the external drives on the end of the fstab. You can always do a "blkid" command to find the new UUID's and copy and paste them into the old fstab overwriting the original root partitions. I totally forgot to mention it. UUID's are great for persistence across reboots when you shuffle several external drives like I do. If your machine stays pretty much the same for months on end there isn't much advantage.

[oshunluvr]

You can also change the UUID of the file systems back to the original.

[jlittle]

Since we're talking about it...

UUID's are great for persistence across reboots when you shuffle several external drives like I do.

Labels also have that advantage, Strictly in my opinion, UUIDs are good for computers to identify things, but bad for humans to do so. If one is working with /etc/fstab, labels make that less error prone. Here's part of my desktop's fstab:

#
#file system mount               type    options                       dump pass
LABEL=mainn   /                  btrfs   subvol=@r,noatime                  0 1
LABEL=mainn   /home              btrfs   subvol=@h,noatime                  0 2
LABEL=swan    none               swap    sw                                 0 0
LABEL=EFIN    /boot/efi          vfat    umask=000,noatime,noauto,user      0 1
#
#john's extra mounts
# the true root of the btrfs volume for convenience
LABEL=mainn   /t                 btrfs   subvol=/,noatime                   0 0
# using the arch approach to snapper snapshots; instead of a subvolume called
# /.snapshots, we have a subvolume called @snapshots mounted on /.snapshots
LABEL=mainn   /.snapshots        btrfs   subvol=@snapshots,noatime          0 0
LABEL=mainn   /home/.snapshots   btrfs   subvol=@hsnapshots,noatime         0 0

# the new hard drive for miscellaneous stuff
LABEL=stuff   /mnt/stuff         btrfs   noatime,noauto,user                0 2

Because it's formatted nicely, errors are easy to spot. But, one has to make sure file systems are labelled correctly.

[barfly]

Here is mine:

# <file system>             <mount point>  <type>  <options>  <dump>  <pass>
UUID=0CD0-814D                            /boot/efi      vfat    defaults   0 2
UUID=48fc8355-ff5c-4591-b48d-dad13b81c28a /              ext4    defaults    0 1
UUID=c1e31aa9-be11-496b-9543-93fdb72304b9 /home          ext4    defaults    0 2
UUID=19a7cf7f-dc7b-4ff4-bead-5b5432117d2d swap           swap    defaults   0 0
/swapfile                                 swap           swap    defaults   0 0
tmpfs                                     /tmp           tmpfs   defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0

UUID=6C1A9DDB3DACAA1B   /media/m2       ntfs-3g defaults,uid=1000,gid=1000,nofail 0 2
UUID=FE4A29264A28DD61    /media/2tba    ntfs-3g    defaults,uid=1000,gid=1000,nofail 0 2
UUID=342031462031107A    /media/2tbb    ntfs-3g    defaults,uid=1000,gid=1000,nofail 0 2
UUID=4090AB2A90AB257E    /media/1.5_films ntfs-3g    defaults,uid=1000,gid=1000,nofail 0 2
UUID=fe39e923-217e-46c7-ad8d-a616fc949426    /media/data    ext4    defaults,rw    0    2​

As you can see, the last 5 entries are for external/PCI caddies of NVME drives. There is also another fstab from my backup machine which has network entries for this main machine.
I'm not quite sure why the system put a swapfile in there when there is a swap partition already. It doesn't make any difference so I just left it.