[ale] how do I properly move my home folder from ubuntu to mint

Doug Hall doughalldev at gmail.com
Sun May 26 17:50:41 EDT 2013


Funny you should mention "good backups", because I'm finding that I canot
easily restore "good backups" from the "BackInTime" program that I
recommended to a friend. That friend is now having me move his data files
onto a new computer that I'm setting up, and it's not working too well. I
can't say for sure what the problem is right now, but it's not strictly
permissions related. The new /home is set up to be automatically encrypted.
The old one wasn't. Not sure if that's it either. I'm also not sure if the
backup drive is ext3 and not ext4 like the new one. Not sure if that
matters either.

What I might suggest is that you test your backups, and never move strictly
between two hard drives. Use three. (old, backup, and new) That way if the
backup wasn't what you expected, you still have the old drive.

Doug


On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 1:50 PM, JD <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:

> A) nothing replaces having good backups. NOTHING.
>
> B) the issue with having the OS, apps, and HOME in the same partition is
> why many folks place /home on a dedicated partition. Some distros do this
> by default. For anything besides a play install, I spend the time to setup
> partitions the way I like. That means /home either on a dedicated partition
> or an NFS mount.
>
> This could be a great pre-meeting topic?
>
>
> "Ron Frazier (ALE)" <atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I just had a frustrating experience and want to learn how to avoid it
>> next time.
>>
>> Previously, I had set up all my machines to dual boot with ubuntu and
>> windows.  I've now decided to move to Mint since I'm disenchanted with
>> ubuntu.  Yes, I know they share the same core.
>>
>> The hdd in question had an ext4 partition which was ubuntu and an ntfs
>> partition which I use for data.  I booted a mint live cd, mounted the
>> ubuntu file system by clicking it within the file browser, and copied my
>> ron folder to the ntfs partition.  It complained about some files being
>> inaccessible, but still copied about 43 MB of data, which looked like
>> the right number.
>>
>> I then proceeded to install mint in the ext4 partition.  When I started
>> the installer, I selected the option to erase ubuntu and install mint.
>>
>> I eventually got mint booting and working the way I wanted.  Then, I
>> went back into the file browser and told it to copy the files back from
>> the ntfs partition to the new mint home directory and merge any
>> duplicate folders.  I made the mistake of using a move command rather
>> than a copy command.  At some point, it generated another error saying
>> it couldn't copy some files.  I cannot remember the exact message.  I
>> clicked skip all.  The net result is that about 43 MB of data was copied
>> to my new home folder and about 387 MB of data wasn't copied.
>> Unfortunately, the files were removed from the ntfs folder even though
>> they were skipped, which I think is a design flaw.
>>
>> The net result is that I lost about 9/10 of what was in my original
>> ubuntu home folder unless I can find a backup somewhere.  I don't think
>> there was anything too critical, but who knows.
>>
>> So, can anyone please tell me the prop
>>  er
>> procedure to move the contents
>> of my home folder from a ubuntu install to a mint install so this
>> doesn't happen next time I install mint on another computer?
>>
>> Any help is appreciated and thanks in advance.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
> --
> Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20130526/2a061e65/attachment.html>


More information about the Ale mailing list