How to Keep your core System and personal Data safe while updating to latest distro?


 
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Operating Systems Linux How to Keep your core System and personal Data safe while updating to latest distro?
# 1  
Old 06-16-2012
How to Keep your core System and personal Data safe while updating to latest distro?

Hi everyone,

Almost everything is in the title!
Which partitions do you keep?
Which partitions do you reformat, while doing a clean install?
Personaly, I never format /var and /home partitions when I update to latest linux distribution.
It has been working quite ok up to now, but I was wondering what are the latest best practices on this issue?
Thanks for your comments and advice and keep up the good work!
Cheers,
freddie50
# 2  
Old 06-16-2012
In general, Red Hat recommends that you keep user data on a separate /home partition and perform a fresh installation.
# 3  
Old 06-16-2012
Thanks very much for your reply, very useful indeed!

Talking about Red Hat and knowing how much they pay attention to details, would there be a a more in depth paper (documentation) about this subject?
Thanks again for you help!
Regards,
freddie50
# 4  
Old 06-16-2012
Personally I reserve /home for system user home directories and use a totally different directory tree on its own mountpoint(s) for the user home directories.

Some Administrators use soft links from /home to user home directories on another filesystem. I don't, though it is a valid approach.


For the system data in say root, /usr, and /var, I would backup every significant configuration file and restore (or blend) those files as appropriate after an upgrade. Rehearse on an expendable test system until you get it right. It's not easy.

Last edited by methyl; 06-16-2012 at 08:11 PM..
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