Ubuntu
ubiquity package

Requesting new feature - preserve Home on installs

Asked by eross

Besides on the live CD being able to install new, along side.. how about adding a feature to Upgrade? Especially if it is releases in between? Or at least preserve the /HOME and user name. Ubuntu releases happen so often and curiosity peaks as well, it can be a chore keeping my user name and data manually. I end up spending a couple of hours copying and restoring directories and files. Also keeping the /HOME on a separate partition, especially with the new hardware coming in such as tablets and laptops make it difficult for the common user to go from windows or mac to linux and add a second harddrive in their computer. Or upgrade to a larger one and then partition it for two OS's. When the next version of Ubuntu comes out, how are they to easily keep their older Ubuntu data/files/user(s) without alot of manual intervention. Does any of this make sense?

Thanks.

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Warren Hill (warren-hill) said : 		#1

The place for suggestions is here
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

However, if you upgrade using the update manager it will keep you old data and usually (but not always) programs too.

Always backup before upgrading to a new distribution however because while its rare its not unheard of for it to go wrong.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#2

If you install with a separate /home partition, this will then be available. You simply mark the system partition for formatting to Ext4 and used as /, then the home partition be used as /home and Ext4 but NOT formatted. For normal desktop use you will need about 10 or 15 gigabytes of space, 1.1xRAM for swap (assuming more than 2Gb RAM) and use the rest for /home.

Easy. I do it on all systems I install:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
 1 1049kB 10.0GB 9999MB primary ext4 boot
 2 10.0GB 13.1GB 3096MB primary linux-swap(v1)
 3 13.1GB 80.0GB 66.9GB primary ext4

10Gb /, 3Gb swap and 67Gb /home :)

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eross (drarem) said : 		#3

actionparsnip - that is fine, but where I'm at now, I have an old ext3 HOME separate partition on a separate harddrive, and 12.04 installed on ext4. This is fine if you have a desktop, but what if I have a chromebook or laptop with a single hd?

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Warren Hill (warren-hill) said : 		#4

You don't need a separate hard drive just a separate partition. It can be difficult on a chromebook because the hard drive is small but for a normal laptop not an issue.

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eross (drarem) said : 		#5

One more question then, scenario is my mother has ubuntu 12.04 on her laptop and say ubuntu 16.xx is out using BTRFS4 (or whatever) and I see it would include stuff she would like. She has built up bookmarks, emails, photos, etc on her separate home partition formatted on ext4. This would require backing up the home directory, reformatting and restoring correct?