[solved) liveCDinstall over an existing gentoo partion

[damsos]

hello,
I have a laptop with a old gentoo and windows partition, i would like to reinstall 2006.0 safely over the old partion
and being sure of not loosing any data.
If i save /etc/make.conf X11.conf and the world and grub.conf files , do you think i can install a stage3
and upgrade safely ?
Thanks for your advices
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so much to do, so little time.

[curtis119]

If it's a working gentoo install why not just "emerge --sync && emerge -uD world"?
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Gentoo: it's like wiping your ass with silk.

[damsos]

in fact i want to do it thisway because emerge is broken and i can't run python-updater.
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so much to do, so little time.

[GentooMik]

If you want to destroy just the operating system without your personal files. That is if i understood it correctly.

It is wise always to backup your data prior to do anything on the live partition. Wit that said, I will tell you what I do sometimes. If anything goes wrong always have a backup copy. My information has no warantee and since it is unstandard way to do things possibly even wrong expect possibility of things to go wrong. You do have data backed up right?! Assume you just do not want to reinstall things back off your backup.

You may try to do the following below (to preserve your home assuming you did not create its own partition):

1. Boot into the live 2006 LiveCD gentoo. (You can use any live cd that gives you root access. You may do it with nearly all installers which I have personally tried over the years. Even the debian net install allows you to drop into the terminal).

2. (assuming you go with the gentoo 2006.1 livecd) At the boot prompt type gentoo-nofb (for pure guiless boot) with nox: gentoo-nofb nox and allow it to boot.

3. mount your partitons (example only your partition may vary) mount -t ext3 etx2 etc. You may not even need to do that. So it looks something like this (I did not use defaults but for handbook sake lets use that do not remember off top of my head refer as guide ito the handbook): mount /dev/hdx /mnt/gentoo "x" with your number hda1 hda2 hda3 and so on. mkswap /dev/hda2 mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/gentoo/boot. 4. Chroot to /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash switch to /boot rm all their later cd to your root and type in -rf /bin /etc /dev /usr /var and rest of the folders on one line. rm -rf ....... but be sure to not add home to rm -rf otherwise you will loose it. Once it removes everything none of the commands will work in chroot since you blown away the operating system but retained your filesystem. type in exit to get back to your live cd where all commands should work again as they are running off the cd/ in ram. Now you can do a ls /mnt/gentoo and see if your hard drive actually only has home on it. Next, type in umount /mnt/gentoo umount /nt/gentoo/boot.

Now after you unmounted all you may start the "gui" or the other ncurses installer. Once your greeted at the installer do not forget to tell it to keep the filesystem. Not to format it. As your precious home is located on it. Just tell it to install on that partition. You may allow if you want to format the swap partition. Since it is a swap doubt you may want to. Another method is of course to use the live cd gentoo etc and bring up the root file manager to delete the files in a "GUI". To destroy the old operating system folders. I am just sharing the way I did this. Of course zillian of ways to do the same thing. Heh linux is so portable you can likely do it off a floppy disk without x as long as you have a terminal handy. Proper way of course would be start fresh. You may want to run fsck on the unmounted partitions before had just to see the consistency before even starting. You may perhaps retain your old custom configs by moving them for time being to /home. I did not try preserving /etc perhaps you can do that too as most configs are in it. It may run into problems though on some if the programs are way too new.

If your operating system is that messed up beyond repair this may be one of the few options to preserve your personal data. At the same time destroying the OS parts. I suggest though to wait unti someone that knows on your particular problem more. Because maybe you can fix it without resorting to totally starting over this way.
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Attempt to Treat others, the way you would like to be treated yourself.

[damsos]

Thanks for the advice,
i did it and installed everything back
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so much to do, so little time.