Lost user settings after moving /home to new partition

[danegardner]

I've recently given up on Windows as a desktop platform for most of my work, and have shifted all of it over to Kubuntu's Feisty on my laptop -- with of course a few necessities in a VM. I've been very happy with the setup, even though the learning has been slow. Last night I decided to upgrade to Gutsy (because it was there, and I had time) and didn't have many problems other than having to rebuild some VMWare related stuff.

Since upgrading, I've decided on partitioning out my /home directory from the monolithic root partition that kubuntu's setup recommended. After ghosting the drive to a backup drive, I began by using a start-disk (a Feisty) and gparted to split the partition. Then modified my fstab file to mount the partition to the /home directory. When I rebooted, the system wouldn't load due to a kstartupconfig error. After some digging around on the net, I found that I needed to play with usermod and chown to point to the proper directory.

Now, everything seems to be in order (the error has gone away and the directory is mounted properly) however none of my settings are taking effect. Firefox for example doesn't have any of my bookmarks or plugins; and my desktop icons are defaulted. I've tried recovering my entire /home directory from the ghosted drive to the new partition, but to no effect. I can't figure out where KDE is pulling the settings from, even though all the settings for my user are pointing to my /home directory.

I've searched for a solution to this, just about everywhere and have come up with ...nothing... if anybody can point me in the right direction, I'd be much obliged! -dg

[molloollom]

Re: Lost user settings after moving /home to new partition

Have you tried making a symlink from where your system expects your home to be to where it now exists on the new partition?

[Fintan]

Re: Lost user settings after moving /home to new partition

Your KDE settings are in /home/yourusername/.kde you settings for kontact (kmail, calander, etc) are in .kde/share/apps. Similarily your firefox settings and profiles are in ./mozilla/firefox. Your Thunderbird settings and profiles are (usually in .mozilla-thunderbird, etc.

These are so called hidden files and can be accessed in konqueror or dolphin by going into View" and clicking on "show hidden files.

Now al you need to do is copy and paste your relevant "old settings" to the appropriate"new setting" files. For example copy the files from your old .mozilla/firefox/ to your new .mozilla/firefox and so on.
Logout and login in again.

A word of coution do not touch any files in .kde that do not relate to your apps (kontact, etc.) you are using a different version of kde in gutsy!

I hope this helps

[lowey23]

Re: Lost user settings after moving /home to new partition

When I made a separate /home partition, I followed these instructions

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/separatehome

Maybe you need this part of the instructions:-

Next, we're going to specify to use the new home partition as /home:

sudo cp /old/etc/fstab /old/etc/fstab_backup
sudo nano /old/etc/fstab
You'll then be taken to the nano text editor. Add in this line:

/dev/hdaX /home ext3 nodev,nosuid 0 2 (where dev/hdaX is your /home partition)
Then save (Control-X), confirm (Y), and exit (Enter)
After you reboot, you should be now using your new /home partition.

Worked for me, not sure if that is your problem but just a suggestion.