Re-installing w/ out reformat

russianpirate · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 4:41 am Post subject: Re-installing w/ out reformat

I had a lot of changes in system (-gnome,+fluxbox,etc.) and i have a lot of unneeded packages and libraries and other problems.. i'm thinking of doing this (please correct any step if you think it should be different):

1.Copy personal data/configs to a folder on / called backup
2.Boot from LiveCD mount all fs's chroot to my current root (without formatting) and deleting all besides lost+found and backup
3.Using the Developer's Method w/ NPTL or 2004.2 2.6/NPTL guide (please tell me if there is a newer one with NPTL) install stage1*.tar.gz into / and continue as usual
4.Finish installing everything (X, fluxbox,etc.)
5.Then finally copy all the files i need into my home
6.Smaller gentoo, better performance

I'm doing this weird method so I dont have to reformat and dont have to move the data to another HD possibly loosing the file attributes (owner, permissions)

Should I reconfigure all /etc/* files over or use the old ones (just for information)..
Here's the things im put in backup:
/etc/* (just incase)
~/music
~/documents
some ~/.*/ like fluxbox (what else?)

Any other things you think i should think about copying (except more home stuff)?

Ateo · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 5:14 am Post subject:

I don't understand. How do you reinstall ANY linux distro without reformat and expect a smaller installation? Your end result will be no different. I would think a reinstall w/o reformat would be done just to salvage a busted installation (sort of like a recovery disc or something to fix require system packages such as the first packages installed under a stage 1)....

I might be off track. If I am, ignore me. =)

If you're backing up critical files, what's the problem with reformatting the disk?

smerf · l33t Joined: 06 Nov 2004 Posts: 778 Location: Polska

why do you want to reinstall linux? the only reason for reinstalling everything and reformatting partitions is when your machine gets hacked and you want to be sure that there no more rootkits, etc. and have no time/knowledge to securely fix it.
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Microsoft is not the answer, Microsoft is the question, the answer is no.

djm · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 10:30 am Post subject:

I'd just do emerge -uavDN world (if you changed your USE flags), emerge -av depclean, revdep-rebuild, and you're done

Much easier than reinstalling...
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russianpirate · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 1:44 pm Post subject:

thats what i did: depclean and it screwed my system over plus it didnt remove all gnome packages (gnome-terminal???! wtf?!.. didnt remove things that were dependant on other gnome things)
revdep-rebuild wants to install way too many packages that i never had

so ill just reinstall.. anyways i wasnt asking about whether to reinstall or not.. just if that was an ok way to do it?

smerf · l33t Joined: 06 Nov 2004 Posts: 778 Location: Polska

russianpirate · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 2:28 pm Post subject:

/home is not a partition its a folder and when i extract stage1*.tar.gz it might overwrite some of the users.. and i dont need allll files in my home.. just important ones

smerf · l33t Joined: 06 Nov 2004 Posts: 778 Location: Polska

russianpirate · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 2:53 pm Post subject:

Ok well im going to livecd! Tell you the results late today or early tomorrow!

Kaapeli · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 5:47 pm Post subject:

This is how I did my system reinstall while ago:

Continue using the old system
Make /newroot directory
Extract the appropriate tarball under the /newroot directory
Emerge system and other appropriate packages you need to boot under the new system
Boot with a liveCD
Make a /oldroot directory (in the root partition), move the content of the root partition under the oldroot directory
Move the contents of the /oldroot/newroot directory to the root of the root partition
Move appropriate files/folders from the old root directory to the new root directory (/etc/passwd, /home, etc...)
Boot your system again, with the new root folder
Do a "cat /oldroot/var/lib/portage/world | sort > old_world_file.txt" and then see what packages you need to install, only emerge those packages you really need.
Copy appropriate old config files from /oldroot/etc to your new system
Enjoy your new fresh system

Only difference that I had was that I kept the /oldroot and /newroot on their own partitions, therefore I had a chance to easily boot under my old system in case of a failure. And I didn't even need to boot with the LiveCD. Luckily I didn't need that option. The easiest thing was that I didn't need to spend time with configuring the packages again, I just copied the config files from my old system. Very easy and simple. The new system was fully usable within 24 hours (it took less than hour to configure things). Other good thing was that I could do the stage 2 installation under the old system, while using it normally. Basically the down time due to the reinstall was only about 16 hours, actually much less since I could restart services very quickly after the daemons had finished emerging.
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russianpirate · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 11:58 pm Post subject:

Yes! Installed fine.. configured mostly everything.. now installing Xorg yay.. no more gnome now my system is about 15gb (will be w/ flux).. and probably about 27 (instead of 30) when i install all my games (i might not tho)