Copying home directories after install/upgrade

[Jimmy Green]

the hidden files of some user centric programs, like window managers for 
example(kde,...), keep lots-o-stuff in /home/...

the layout of these things might change from version to version...?
ideally layouts would be made backward compatable so that given program could 
detect and 'fix' older user level configs when upgrading versions.

if you swap in _copies_ of older hidden directories/files which may have user 
level config info, it may well('should') work fine...
if not, swap back the vanilla stuff from the install...then one has to redo all 
the stuff done last time (user preferences,,,etc...)

for things like personal dialup scripts,,, miscelania... which one may have 
written previously and directly or indirectly installed in /home/... you _may_ 
be daeling with a different set of variables of how things get done in the new 
version of distro... or different versions of tools...

since usually stuff like that is left to given user, one should not have to 
consider removing any such stuff from newly installed /home/...

as for replacing, there should be a very good chance that any such stuff done 
previously will still work, barring of course a major change in distro...


Alex Beamish wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 13:13:12 -0500, James Knott <james.knott-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
>>Alex Beamish wrote:
>>
>>>Hello,
>>>
>>>I've just re-installed Mandrake 10 on my step-son's computer, and I
>>>want to copy his home directory from the small drive (6.4G, dual boot
>>>with Windows 98) where I originally installed it to the new drive
>>>(80G, Mandrake only). The previous installation was Mandrake 10
>>>Community which I tried unsuccessfully to upgrade to 10 -- I think it
>>>failed because there wasn't enough space.
>>>
>>>I've managed to mount the drives with the old installation, but I
>>>guess what I really want to do is
>>>
>>>  rm -fr /home/matt/*   # force, recursive (new location)
>>>  cp -apr /olda7/* /home/matt  # all files, protect
>>>permissions/ownership, recursive
>>>
>>>I'm just not sure it's going to mess something up .. are there files
>>>that I shouldn't copy over, but leave from the original?
>>
>>All you need is "cp -a", which includes the d, p & r options.
> 
> 
> OK, thanks, that's for the low level 'copy these files here' part --
> but I'm also interested in finding out if Mandrake's going to be upset
> that I overwrote the new version of some file in a user's directory
> with an older version.



-- 
to bring heed and grate to halt try for (ms = -1 ; timetravel(ms) ; ms++) { ; }
if your keyboard is _really_ slow, you should get to the second iteration ...
PS, if X implements better method, endless echo "thanks" ; timetravel 0 <Enter>

Jimmy

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