Reinstalling/Downgrading Ubuntu

[NoOp]

On 05/20/2009 04:11 PM, Rashkae wrote:
> NoOp wrote:

>> Note: AFAIK using this method only preserves /home. So if someone has a
>> lot of added data/packages in /opt /usr/ etc., this excercise does them
>> no good without backups of those directories of course. But preserving
>> /home is the main goal here, so I'm happy on the first successful
>> attempt. I of course have an alternate motive for getting this right...
>> I have a college student that I gave one of my 'Ubuntu Christmas'
>> systems to & I'm scheduled to give her a faster system in a few weeks
>> following graduation & want to make the transition as easy as possible.
>> I'll of course back up her entire drive before the swap, but this may
>> make things go a little faster with the actual install part.

> 
> Trying to preserve anything but home is asking for trouble, if you end
> up intermixing files that are not binary compatible, things break in
> subtle ways, and god save you from the wrath of devs if someone spends
> hours trying to debug a problem your having only to find that it's some
> left over file.
> 

Ah... Good point!
BTW: Just did my second reinstall on hardy over hardy. It worked.

***DISCLAIMER****NOT FINISHED TESTING YET***

Here is what I have so far:

Dual drive system - 40GB drives:
 sda has test hardy & will be used for install partition.
 sdb has test jaunty - I have this set to boot only with bios change.

liveCD - Hardy

install
 Fill in timezone data
Manual
  Forward
/dev/sda1 ext3 (where my /home resides)
  Edit Partition
 Use as: ext3
 Format Partition: UNCHECKED
 Mount Point: /
  OK
  Forward
Warning: The file system on /dev/sda1 assigned to / has not been
marked for formating. Directories containing system files (/ boot, /etc,
usr, /var, ..)
that already exist under any defined mountpoint will be deleted during
the install.
Please ensure that you have backed up any critical data before installing.
  Continue
Fill in 'Who are you?' Note: I kept the same name of the computer and
username.
  Forward
Ignored 'Migrate Documents and Settings' for data on my 2nd hard drive
(sdb1)
  Forward
  Install

Install completed & reboot.

Modified a folder in ~/tempdir (a directory I created) to make sure it
survives - it did.
Placed a folder in /opt (jmf) to see if it survives - it did. This was
quite a surprise to me, so further experimenting w/jaunty install to see
if it still survives.
Gnome desktop settings survived & work.

Need to:
1. Boot to jaunty drive to see if if survives grub following sda hardy
tests.
2. Install jaunty on sda1 and see if it keeps hardy test /home.
3. Reinstall hardy on sda1 to see if it keeps jaunty /home.