Allegedly, on or about 17 December 2017, Temlakos sent:
I need to set up links to:
- All folders that I want to hold on the data drive, including
configuration files that I want to preserve from one iteration to the next--like .thunderbird, .firefox, .chrome, .adobe, and so on. These would be the top-level folders, the ones in the home directory, and not the subfolders.
Those kind of things are the ones that can cause you grief, and web browsers seem to be the worst. Settings and plugins for one version of a program change from the next. Blindly applying old ones often creates odd behaviour. You can be better to use the application to import older settings. Then it's (probably) more likely to *convert* old settings into newer ones.
Though I tend to just re-configure the software, rather than import old data. I find it much less painful.
Long ago I changed to using a local IMAP server for mail, so mail programs only need to be reconfigured for logins, the mail is on my server. Else mail programs would be the most hideous thing to try and keep going over different installs.
- Any file that, for whatever reason, is sitting in my home
directory and that I haven't made up my mind to place into a folder, like Downloads or Pictures or Documents--whatever. (This might include password files, if I can get the old Password Manager program reinstalled. I have an rpm for that, but I don't know whether that would install or not.) And I must do that for every user account.
More or less. Then try to get out of the habit of just dumping stuff into your homespace root folder.
I had a couple of ways of dealing with all of this. I changed the defaults from ~/documents, ~/videos, et cetera, to suit my own system. If you modify what's in /etc/skel you can have the system automatically set up new users with a customised set of directories. As a quick example, I have directories like this:
~/local/documents ~/local/downloads ~/local/sort-out-later ~/local/videos
For things I'll quickly dump onto the local hard drive and probably not keep. That was done by creating a "local" folder inside /etc/skel, and the other folders inside the local one.
And directories that are on the network, like this:
~/nas/documents ~/nas/downloads ~/nas/sort-out-later ~/nas/videos
Again, if you keep whatever keyword consistent where I wrote "nas," you can put that inside /etc/skel, too.
That's where I'll store anything worth keeping.
Where "nas" is a symlink to mount point to my own space on the network drive (ln -s /nas/home/tim /home/tim/nas), and those other directories are simply my directories within it (no symlink commands needed).
This scheme works whether I'm symlinking to a NAS, or another drive in the box, just change the path in the link to suit.
Question: would you preserve all hidden application configuration files on the separate drive? Or do some things deserve to reside on the system drive and get overwritten with every clean install?
I'd let configurations go in their default place, and have them new for every install.
Regarding storing configurations abnormally, it's worth noting that if your other drive is a NAS, it needs to be up and running before logging in. Otherwise, your programs are going to start as if from new, and write new configuration.