[DESKTOP] New install not upgrade my questions

[CharlieDaves]

Hello everyone.
So in regards to
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...or-new-install

My goal is to do a new install of 20.04.1 and copy my 18.04 /Home over. I am just making sure I have the plan correctly laid out before I begin, and loose the ability to get onto the internet and this forum for help

1. Backup everything.
Yep. Doing that in the background as I type
2. Suitable new media.
I have an old (18month) 120GB SSD gathering dust. Is this big enough for the / (root + boot) drive? I don't play games, and basically with have a standard install plus a couple of other things.
3. Coping /Home.
So once I make the new bootable SSD, and /Home on the current 1TB SSD. I have to reboot on the current 1TB, and then copy https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post437888 using this method?
Then... Hang on... I is confused. I think I'll need to clone my /Home elsewhere first

Will compressing the /Home folder to a NAS then uncompressing back work?
OR
Do I actually have to clone my current 1TB SSD to a third device first ?

So I have a 18.04 bootable device?
Thanks

[claydoh]

1) check

2) Sure, that is more than plenty for the purpose. Heck it is big enough for everything if you want.

3) I am confused a little here (not uncommon!), cloning is not needed here, and will just add extra work.

So, install Kubuntu, with manual setup option.::

You can use Partition Manager to do all the partitioning work from the live session before running the installer.

On the 128Gb drive
Create a ~500mb fat32 partition to later be set as EFI in the installer
Make the rest of the drive one ext4 partiton

On the 1tb drive, wipe and make it one partition as ext4

Start the installer
Select the manual option
set the 500mb fat32 as EFI, and the other as /
on the 1tb drive set the partition as /home
No need to check the 'format' option here as these are new and blank already

Install, making sure to use the same user and password as you had on 18.04 (makes things easier to transfer, maintains ownership and permissions)

Boot to new OS , or stay in the live session if you want
Copy the contents of your backed up /home/username dir to the new one.
It is theoretically better to copy the plasma configs form outside a running desktop, so the live session may be preferable.

Done.

There is always a chance of some application settings not working between releases, but this should be negligible. Plasma itself shouldn't have any issues with 18.04 settings on 20.04 at all as far as I have seen.

[jlittle]

I have an old (18month) 120GB SSD gathering dust. Is this big enough for the / (root + boot) drive?

Surely. My Kubuntu root is about 11 GiB. So unless you have some huge databases (by default they usually put data in /var) or massive softwares in /opt, 120 GB is overkill. To resolve any uncertainty, run

sudo du -xhd1 /

to see what your present root is. BTW, for SSDs, 18 months is not "old", for most uses of the term.

3. Coping /Home.
So once I make the new bootable SSD, and /Home on the current 1TB SSD. I have to reboot on the current 1TB, and then copy https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post437888 using this method?
Then... Hang on... I is confused. I think I'll need to clone my /Home elsewhere first

Well, you've confused me, too.

Firstly I would ask, does the computer use UEFI to boot? If so, some thought about where you want ESPs to go would be good. Whether you want to continue with the 120 GB in the system would be an influence. You use "/Home" with a capital H, I assume you mean "/home".

But, what I think you're getting at, you are asking if leaving /home on your existing 1 TB drive as it is ok. The methods in the posts you've linked to involve copying the old /home over the new, not the new over the old. I think doing the copy with -r --no-clobber (or in dolphin, click "Write into" for directories, "Skip" for files) gets around this. However, you'd have to change the new install to use the old /home.

Will compressing the /Home folder to a NAS then uncompressing back work?

It's unlikely compressing will save anything, unless you've got vast amounts of plain text. I would expect that most of the space taken up by your files is for music, pictures, or video, and they're usually already compressed. However, copying everything to an archive (possibly compressed) on the NAS, would simplify your view of what's happening.

OR
Do I actually have to clone my current 1TB SSD to a third device first ?

I don't think so, some renaming might be all that's needed. (I'd also clear any browser caches and ~/.cache as they're not needed.)

I'm guessing unless you tell us the partitions on the 1 TB drive. Is there an ESP, root, home, and possibly a swap? That would be a default Kubuntu install to ext4. If so, you could rename /home/<user> to /home/<user>-old, then install over the old system on the 1 TB, carefully telling the installer not to format /home. Then copy not overwriting as above, then rename /home/<user> to /home/<user>-empty, and /home/<user>-old to /home/<user>.

Doing an install to the 120 GB drive, for warm fuzzies, might be a good idea, even if you don't end up using it. Cloning that installation to the 1 TB is possible, but there'd be fiddly stuff to fix up, involving new UUIDs and such.

Assuming you haven't used btrfs already, if you do end up copying /home in order to copy it back again, you might consider wiping the 1 TB and using btrfs on it. There's a lot of options then. I usually upgrade and do a fresh install, and keep the old, and later when I feel like it, say six months later, delete what I'm not using.

[CharlieDaves]

Boot to new OS , or stay in the live session if you want
Copy the contents of your backed up /home/username dir to the new one.
It is theoretically better to copy the plasma configs form outside a running desktop, so the live session may be preferable.

I read in the above mention guide that you need to boot from the old 18.04 and from there copy the /home data to the new 20/04 (1Tb) /Home drive.

Thats why I was confused as to cloning.

Do I have to or Not to copy the 18.04 /home to the 20.04 /home booted from
1. 18.04
2. 20.04
3. Live version of 18.04
4. Live 20.04 version

Thanks

[claydoh]

You can fo it all from the 20.04 iso

The only thing that is important is that your newly installed OS is not running plasma when copying Plasma specific config files.

Plasma loads its configs to ram when the user logs in then saves back to disk at log out. This gives a small chance that a restored desktop specific setting file could be overwritten by the new one currently loaded into memory when you log out. The worst thing is you have a small possibility to lose some of your customized desktop specific settings if you copy the files while booted to your new Kubuntu desktop GUI

This could be done by logging in to the command line, or 'killing' plasmashell ( the desktop) while fully logged in to the desktop, or from any live Linux OS session.

The 20.04 installer is simply the most convenient place.


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[CharlieDaves]

On the 128Gb drive
Create a ~500mb fat32 partition to later be set as EFI in the installer
Make the rest of the drive one ext4 partiton

On the 1tb drive, wipe and make it one partition as ext4

Besides "Electronic Fuel Injection" what is EFI and why do I need set some space aside?
Does this also apply to 'swap' if it is still created and/or used ?

CONFUSED.
The 1TB SSD is CURRENTLY this pc (root, boot, Home, everything).
If I am going to use the

[FONT=Monospace]cp -rf ./.[^.]* /media/user/whatevertheplaceiscalled/home/[/FONT]

Then I need the current media, available. I have made room on another drive, and I will copy /home to it, then when 'installing 20.04' I'll use that copy to the newly wiped 1TB SSD.
Whilst on it.

Thanks to all who replied. It's appreciated.

[claydoh]

Unless your computer is really old it is most likely using Efi to boot the machine and this partition is required. Of course one can use the old. 'Legacy' mbr/bios for booting if desired.

*buntu uses a swap file instead of a separate partition nowadays. You can create and use a swap partition if you want to.

Using that command isn't a requirement.
You can simply use Dolphin and drag-and-drop the backed up /home/username dir


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[CharlieDaves]

Unless your computer is really old it is most likely using Efi to boot the machine and this partition is required. Of course one can use the old. 'Legacy' mbr/bios for booting if desired.

Yep. Figured that out without the assist of this forum. read
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...707#post440707
for more information.

*buntu uses a swap file instead of a separate partition nowadays. You can create and use a swap partition if you want to.
Using that command isn't a requirement.
You can simply use Dolphin and drag-and-drop the backed up /home/username dir

Yep. Figured that out when all that command did was copy the 'hidden' files & folders only. Realized that after my 3rd attempt at getting all files backed up. 1st=command, 2nd=gz zip, 3rd= good old fashioned drag N drop

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