On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 2:27 PM Tim via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
Could you please suggest me the best way to copy the home directory to a new computer?
If you want a simple long-term solution to this problem, take your old hard drive, and add it to your new computer, after you have installed your OS to the new computer. Then set up new user accounts to use the old drive's home directory, or modify any existing accounts to do that, or simply use /etc/fstab to mount /home onto the directory tree from the second drive (I think the latter is the easiest approach).
If you plan to use a computer across several different releases, and don't want to work out how to transfer user's homespaces across each release, it's easier to *not* do that. Have the OS and home on separate drives.
Each new release installation can be done over the top of the old OS drive without losing any data on your home drive. And if you're wary that you might accidentally install to the wrong drive, you can always unplug it for the installation period.
There's probably a few other directories that some people might want to keep on the second drive, for the same reason. Such as /var/www, if they serve websites. Likewise with databases.
Thanks to all for your help. Done!
Paul