How do I migrate to Mageia with existing /home

[broadstairs]

I currently run Mandriva 2010.2 live and installed on 1 internal h/disk and Mageia RC on another internal h/disk. What I plan on doing when Mageia 1 comes out is to do a new install on that h/disk which currently contains it but connect to my home partition currently in use on Mandriva so I have all my stuff already there. Now should the worst happen (and its always a good idea to plan for this just in case - which usually means it wont happen ) what will I need to backup prior to this so that I can switch back to Mandriva 2010.2 using this same home partition? My guess would be things like ./kde since the switch to Mageia would change stuff in here but what else?

Stuart

[oldcodger]

Welcome Stuart SS44 here.
I have been playing around with Mageia for a while now on a dual boot system. At first I kept the /home's well apart but as time has past the two have become somewhat intermingled. Seeing as Mageia is in the early stages of forking there is not a great deal of difference. The major difference is that Mageia repos are more up to date. I use both Mandriva and Mageia as one now so when the release is available there should be no problems switching totally to Mageia keeping my old /home. The safest way would be to have the two /homes for now for the ./files and link your data files, which will still be usable by both distributions.By linking you only need one set of files.
If anyone else can think of a better way then please tell us.

[broadstairs]

One further question, which may seem obvious to some..., if I tell the installer to use my existing /home how do all the existing users defined get created in the new system? Do I simply tell the installer to create new users with the same name and it will use the existing directories? I am assuming this is what I do but having never upgraded this way before I just want to make sure that I dont lose anything from the existing directories.

Stuart

[jkerr82508]

If you perform an upgrade all of your exiting users are preserved. If you do a "clean" install, but keep your existing /home partition, then you'll need to create the users (either during install or after). To avoid problems, it's important to ensure that not only the name but also the UID and GID of each user on Mageia is the same as it was on Mandriva. You can ensure this by using the "Advanced" option in the user-creation page of the installer to assign specific UID's and GID's. You can find out the present UID's and GID's from MCC- System - Manage Users.

Jim

[djennings]

One further question, which may seem obvious to some..., if I tell the installer to use my existing /home how do all the existing users defined get created in the new system? Do I simply tell the installer to create new users with the same name and it will use the existing directories? I am assuming this is what I do but having never upgraded this way before I just want to make sure that I dont lose anything from the existing directories.

Stuart

At the point in the installer near the end where it lists the setup you have the option to add more users. When you add a user there is the 'Advanced' button which allows you to create a home directory or not, and can choose the UID number of the user being created. You will have to had made a note of the UID numbers of the existing users in order to make sure they have ownership of their own home directories as mentioned in another thread.