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From: Paul Tarvydas on 5 Nov 2005 12:28
When people talk about a "clean install", do they mean to wipe *everything*
out, including /home?

If so, how do you migrate various settings - e.g. kmail filters, konqueror
bookmarks, address book, calendar, etc? (cp -a'ing the mail directory is
fairly obvious, once you figure out where the new mail directory is).

I'm having a bunch of strange problems which accumulate over a couple of
days, then culminate with my usb mouse not working - then, I break down and
re-install.

When installing, I reformatted /, but kept my /home directory.

I'm beginning to believe that converting my mdk10.1 home directory to
mdv2006 (powerpack) is what's causing my cumulative bit rot and system
death, but I'm not excited about manually re-entering all of my doo-dads
into mdv2006 if that's not necessary.

thanks for any advice
pt
From: Juha Siltala on 6 Nov 2005 04:06
On Sat, 05 Nov 2005 12:28:57 -0500, Paul Tarvydas wrote:

> When people talk about a "clean install", do they mean to wipe
> *everything* out, including /home?

No, it refers to a new installation of the system instead of an upgrade. I
have changed systems several times, but my current /home is perhaps four,
five years old now.

> If so, how do you migrate various settings - e.g. kmail filters,
> konqueror bookmarks, address book, calendar, etc? (cp -a'ing the mail
> directory is fairly obvious, once you figure out where the new mail
> directory is).

Have /home on a partition of its own and it should be OK. Otherwise, you
just restore it from backups, which you of course do on a daily basis. I
do full backups on Sundays, incremental on other days.

> I'm beginning to believe that converting my mdk10.1 home directory to
> mdv2006 (powerpack) is what's causing my cumulative bit rot and system
> death, but I'm not excited about manually re-entering all of my doo-dads
> into mdv2006 if that's not necessary.

Your home directory should not have any effect on the workings of the
system. Your own configuration may break of course, but that won't affect
the system, much less your hardware. I do clean up some dot-files in my
home directory from time to time, just to see what something like new
GNOME releases use as defaults. My dot files have never broken any
hardware yet though. :-!

--
Juha Siltala
http://www.edu.helsinki.fi/activity/people/jsiltala/

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