[ale] how do I properly move my home folder from ubuntu to mint

Stephen R. Blevins stephen.r.blevins at gmail.com
Sun May 26 14:20:52 EDT 2013


One approach:

1) Under Ubuntu:
	a) Carve out an additional partition, sized to hold both the /home 
partition, and all but 10-20GB of the ext4 free space.  Ensure this 
partition is located at the top end of your cylinder numbers.  Use 
gpartd for this, as required.
	b) mount this partition to some stub directory (e.g. /mnt/newpart)
	c)  *Copy* all existing /home/* files to /mnt/newpart.
2)  Install Mint, specifying the "current" Ubuntu partion, but mounting 
the newly created partition to /home.

I do this all the time.  Having /home as its own partition on the disk 
saves me tons of headaches.

Questions?  Feel free to ask.

Stephen R. Blevins
stephen.r.blevins at gmail.com

On 05/26/2013 10:19 AM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I just had a frustrating experience and want to learn how to avoid it
> next time.
>
> Previously, I had set up all my machines to dual boot with ubuntu and
> windows.  I've now decided to move to Mint since I'm disenchanted with
> ubuntu.  Yes, I know they share the same core.
>
> The hdd in question had an ext4 partition which was ubuntu and an ntfs
> partition which I use for data.  I booted a mint live cd, mounted the
> ubuntu file system by clicking it within the file browser, and copied my
> ron folder to the ntfs partition.  It complained about some files being
> inaccessible, but still copied about 43 MB of data, which looked like
> the right number.
>
> I then proceeded to install mint in the ext4 partition.  When I started
> the installer, I selected the option to erase ubuntu and install mint. I
> eventually got mint booting and working the way I wanted.  Then, I went
> back into the file browser and told it to copy the files back from the
> ntfs partition to the new mint home directory and merge any duplicate
> folders.  I made the mistake of using a move command rather than a copy
> command.  At some point, it generated another error saying it couldn't
> copy some files.  I cannot remember the exact message.  I clicked skip
> all.  The net result is that about 43 MB of data was copied to my new
> home folder and about 387 MB of data wasn't copied. Unfortunately, the
> files were removed from the ntfs folder even though they were skipped,
> which I think is a design flaw.
>
> The net result is that I lost about 9/10 of what was in my original
> ubuntu home folder unless I can find a backup somewhere.  I don't think
> there was anything too critical, but who knows.
>
> So, can anyone please tell me the proper procedure to move the contents
> of my home folder from a ubuntu install to a mint install so this
> doesn't happen next time I install mint on another computer?
>
> Any help is appreciated and thanks in advance.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>



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