Clean install deleted my home folder.

[Marcb]

Hi all,

This morning I did a fresh install with a new download of the LiveCD of Kubuntu 11.4. As always, I have left all needed files and settings in my /home folder (on a seperate disk) and when partitioning everything, I indicated that that folder should NOT be formatted.

Praise for backups, because once I checked the install, my /home folder was nice and pristine... None of my files were anywhere to be found.

Seems like a pretty harsh one to me. No idea how to phrase this in launchpad, but later today I will file bug report there as well.

Marc

[PaulW2U]

Re: Clean install deleted my home folder.

This morning I did a fresh install with a new download of the LiveCD of Kubuntu 11.4. As always, I have left all needed files and settings in my /home folder (on a seperate disk) and when partitioning everything, I indicated that that folder should NOT be formatted.

Sorry to hear that. i did a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.04 using today's daily build. All went well and my home directory and all my settings were preserved. May be a bug with the Kubuntu version of course. i think filing a bug report against Ubiquity is the way to go.

[wizard10000]

Re: Clean install deleted my home folder.

Did you tell the installer to mount that partition as /home during install?

[Marcb]

Re: Clean install deleted my home folder.

Did you tell the installer to mount that partition as /home during install?

You know what? I was quoting you to say:'Of course I did!' But since we all have our own stupid moments, I think I am going to verify, just to make sure. :P

[wizard10000]

Re: Clean install deleted my home folder.

You know what? I was quoting you to say:'Of course I did!' But since we all have our own stupid moments, I think I am going to verify, just to make sure. :P

And I've had more than most

It's the easy stuff that trips me up most of the time. A quick look at /etc/mtab should tell you.

cheers -

edit: Also, the partitioner's been a bit wonky from time to time. When I first decided to install I'd picked a daily build three or four days after beta 1 and the partitioner scared me enough I installed the beta instead.

[Marcb]

Re: Clean install deleted my home folder.

Well, I guess this time I had a fairly sane moment.

So I can confirm that I did things right. Unless, in a momentary lapse of reason, I did check the 'format partition' option. But I'm pretty much sure I did not do that. :P

I'll go have a peek at launchpad then. 8)

[dibl]

Re: Clean install deleted my home folder.

I'm adding this to my list of reasons to do partitioning separately (in advance of) installing the OS.

[Marcb]

Re: Clean install deleted my home folder.

By the way, this reminds me of some increadible stupid moment I once experienced as a junior HP Unix administrator.

I was maintaining the newly installed system. HP9000 brand new, still shiny from the supplier, barely a few days old.

And while testing out some things, I decided to clean up the testing stuff I had done. So without thinking too much about it (I was pretty happy with the test results) I go to a higher level directory and type 'rem *.*' and hit 'Return' on my console.

In a split second I realized that I was not 100% secure in what directory I did that exactly..... Now imagine, this was the only moment in my IT career that I very rapidly felt my pulse increase. I started sweating profusely, and my hands started shaking.
I checked the damage done, and fortunately I only emptied a non system critical directory, which was easy to restore.

I think that about an hour later I still had this weakness in my knees from the scare I got from what I had done without giving it much thought. :P

Thank heavens I never repeated that experience, and most of all, that no one noticed. :-X :P

Anyway, back to the testing...

[wizard10000]

Re: Clean install deleted my home folder.

I'm adding this to my list of reasons to do partitioning separately (in advance of) installing the OS.

Unfortunately until they get ubiquity in Natty fixed this may not help you

The manual partitioner starts making changes - and the OS starts installing as soon as you hit Next on the manual partitioner screen. The OS is half-installed before ubiquity asks you for user and timezone information. From what I can see there's no way to back out of an error with the manual partitioner.

[dibl]

Re: Clean install deleted my home folder.

Does that problem exist with the "Alternate" CD as well?

[wizard10000]

Re: Clean install deleted my home folder.

Does that problem exist with the "Alternate" CD as well?

Unknown - but would also be interested in the answer.

[Telengard]

Re: Clean install deleted my home folder.

I'm adding this to my list of reasons to do partitioning separately (in advance of) installing the OS.

I'm adding it to my list of reasons to always double backup my home folder before upgrading.