/home when moving to Fedora from Ubuntu

g geleem at bellsouth.net
Wed May 20 17:32:37 UTC 2015



On 05/16/2015 02:54 PM, Ronal B Morse wrote:
> On 05/16/2015 12:41 PM, g wrote:
>> On 05/16/2015 08:41 AM, Kalpa Welivitigoda wrote:
>>> Hi Danishka and bitlord,
>>>
>>> Thanks a lot for the fast responses.
>>>
>>> It's exactly what bitlord has explained. It seems that it is just a
>>> matter of labelling/display in anaconda. So I think it is safe to
>>> proceed with mounting the ubuntu /home as the home for fedora.
>>
>> i have not installed latest fedora, so i presume there is
>> still an /etc/fstab.
>>
>> if so, consider making the install and not include old /home,
>> then, after install, as root, edit fstab and add your old /home.
>>
>> i have done this for many years and it has always worked.
>>
>> hth.
> .
> There is still an fstab and your suggestion is the easiest way to
> solve the issue.
> .

so it was when i moved from fedora 7 to mandriva to sci-lnx to
centos.

i found no issues.

> However, and it may have been just an old wives' chicken
> superstition, that one should not share the same /home between
> different distributions,

i agree with _not_share_the_same_ /home/~ if there is any
differences in directory path structure.

> or use a /home populated by one distribution as /home for another.
> The reason given to me is there are too many similarly named setup
> and configuration files that simply don't "translate" from one
> distro to another.

such is reasonable and i thought i might have problems when moving
to and from mandriva. tho such did not happen.

> User application data files can certainly be moved across, but
> each installation should be allowed to set up it's own /.config
> and /.local under /home according to it's own needs. Applications
> should be installed fresh from the new distribution's repository
> (or built fresh using the new distro's build tools).
> 
> I would not expect any problem if you're just upgrading by fresh
> install within the same distribution, but I would be be prepared
> for for problems if migrating from Ubuntu to Fedora whilst using
> the same /home.

i do not recall for sure the layout of mandriva when i used it, but
iirc, it was same as red hat. one of my reasons of leaving mandriva
was they left red hat and, iirc, bedded down with ubuntu. my first
update with ubuntu was nothing but problems, too many to recall or
even try to recall.

i was fortunate in that i had made a complete backup of /home, so
it was a true no-brainer of what to do. i was already needing to
increase partition size for /home so i re-partitioned drive, then
installed sci-lnx with default /home, restored /home to it's new
partition from backup, edited /etc/fstab to use new /home partition,
rebooted. all appeared well when i ran various added packages. next
i installed my special packages tar.gz's and all seemed to work.

due to some minor problems that developed with sci-lnx and i did
not wish to deal with them, i reformatted sci-lnx partition,
installed centos 4 with default /home. repeated what i had done
when i installed sci-lnx, all was well again.

all of which i will attribute to both sci-lnx and centos being
clones rhel.

for sure, one should not share /home if system is multi os boot
with different 'flavors' of linux.


-- 

peace out.

in a world with out fences, who needs gates.

CentOS GNU/Linux 6.6

tc,hago.

g
.



More information about the users mailing list