upgrade from 7.04 to 8.10

Is it possible for you to boot into the 8.10 livecd, mount the existing home partition, and then back it up to the usb drive?

From the live cd, the drive should show up on the "Places" menu. You can click on it there to mount it.

Did this solve your problem? Or do you want to try something else?

Hello,

I don't have a live CD, I have an alternate CD for Ubuntu 8.10.
Also I don't know if 8.10 will resolve the problem or not.
At the moment, the external drive is plugged into the USB slot but no
icon has ever appeared, and I'm afraid to unplug it worried that doing
so might corrupt the data. I see an entry in /dev/sbd and /dev sdb1
which I assume is related to the external drive being plugged in, but
there is nothing showing in /media/.hal-mtab or /media/{drive label}. At
the moment I would like to know how I should proceed to disconnect the
external drive without causing corruption by doing an "unsafe drive
removal."
If I can get the external drive disconnected, is there a process which
would allow me to install the 8.10 OS over top of the 7.10 OS partition
without touching the /home partition, but making it available to the
newly installed 8.10 OS? Also I'm not sure how to avoid wiping out the
dual boot option which now exists, which is what happened when my friend
tried to accomplish the same thing.

Thanks,

Joe

On Sun, 2008-11-23 at 04:52 +0000, Matt Jones wrote:

> Your question #52250 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/52250
>
> Status: Open => Needs information
>
> Matt Jones requested for more information:
> Is it possible for you to boot into the 8.10 livecd, mount the existing
> home partition, and then back it up to the usb drive?
>
> >From the live cd, the drive should show up on the "Places" menu. You can
> click on it there to mount it.
>
> Did this solve your problem? Or do you want to try something else?
>

For me, the easiest way to find drives that are hidden and mount/unmount them, would be to use gparted. Or you can simply turn off the machine and disconnect the drive.

There really isn't a safe way to upgrade to a new version and keep the existing home directory. It will have to write some files to the user's directory no matter what. And that is dangerous during an install. You can however create a new new user with a different name, as to not make any changes to the existing user in home. This still would be dangerous, but a lot less.

Since you say you are unfamiliar with linux, I highly recommend finding some way to backup the data before doing this. There is a potential for all the data on the drive to be destroyed.

So basically I would do this:

1. Backup the data somehow(cd-r, thumb drive, ftp, nfs, smb), or decide to take the risk of loosing it all
2. Start the alternative install as normal
3. When partitioning, set the existing home directory as the new home. Make sure not to format /home
4. Set the remaining root and boot partitions where needed, and don't delete the windows partition
5. When creating the user, make sure to give a name different from the existing user, so it does not write anything over tho old user.
6. continue install as normal
7. After install, copy or move the files from the old user's account to the new user
8. If the windows partition isn't automatically added to grub, you can add it later.

I know this might not be the way you want to do it, but there really is no other way.

Hi again,
Just a few more questions.
1. If I turn the machine off without ejecting the drive that is plugged
in, will that not corrupt the drive?
2. I know nothing about grub, so can I see what info is in it now before
doing anything so I might know what needs to be in it after installing
8.10?
3. Is there a good "how to" available related to using the alternate CD,
that might explain what's going on as we proceed?

And thanks for your help, I'll try to proceed as you suggest.

On Sun, 2008-11-23 at 05:49 +0000, Matt Jones wrote:

> Your question #52250 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/52250
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> Matt Jones proposed the following answer:
> For me, the easiest way to find drives that are hidden and mount/unmount
> them, would be to use gparted. Or you can simply turn off the machine
> and disconnect the drive.
>
> There really isn't a safe way to upgrade to a new version and keep the
> existing home directory. It will have to write some files to the user's
> directory no matter what. And that is dangerous during an install. You
> can however create a new new user with a different name, as to not make
> any changes to the existing user in home. This still would be dangerous,
> but a lot less.
>
> Since you say you are unfamiliar with linux, I highly recommend finding
> some way to backup the data before doing this. There is a potential for
> all the data on the drive to be destroyed.
>
> So basically I would do this:
>
> 1. Backup the data somehow(cd-r, thumb drive, ftp, nfs, smb), or decide to take the risk of loosing it all
> 2. Start the alternative install as normal
> 3. When partitioning, set the existing home directory as the new home. Make sure not to format /home
> 4. Set the remaining root and boot partitions where needed, and don't delete the windows partition
> 5. When creating the user, make sure to give a name different from the existing user, so it does not write anything over tho old user.
> 6. continue install as normal
> 7. After install, copy or move the files from the old user's account to the new user
> 8. If the windows partition isn't automatically added to grub, you can add it later.
>
> I know this might not be the way you want to do it, but there really is
> no other way.
>

When the machine shuts down properly, it should properly disconnect any drives and do any "flushing to disk" shenanigans that it needs to do.

Your current grub settings are in the file /boot/grub/menu.lst. They may look scary if they have a bunch of UUIDs instead of the less scary device names(like /dev/sda1).

If you want, you can write down a list of all the partitions and what they are mounted as. For example on my machine root is /dev/sda1 and home is /dev/sda5. This might be handy when partitioning. Again gparted is a good tool to get this info easily.

I haven't seen any how tos for installing ubuntu from the alternate cd. If you are unsure of the text based installer, you can try it from the normal ubuntu live cd. Which is much simpler and friendlier. Or you could practice it from inside a virtual machine. Such as virtual box, vmware, or virt manager.

Hi Matt,

I'm still downloading the screencast and probably will take til tomorrow
to get it and view it. I am also reading what I think might be helpful
on that site in the meantime. This may be all I needed, and I will
respond with the results ASAP to let you know how things work out. In
the meantime, thank you very much for your kind and speedy assistance.

Joe - Thailand

On Sun, 2008-11-23 at 07:09 +0000, Matt Jones wrote:

> Your question #52250 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/52250
>
> Matt Jones proposed the following answer:
> Actually. I just found a screencast that shows how to do the
> partitioning:
>
> http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/MoS2007/10_Installing_Ubuntu_Part_2
>

Hi Matt,

I found the screencast helpful, and from that site found a number of text files to read which I think might give me enough confidence proceed. In the meantime I've discovered another roadblock, my CD drives ribbon cable has an intermittant connection, so I will have to find a way to get to a city where I can buy a replacement. I'm in the middle of rice paddies about 3 clicks from Laos, so this may take some time.
I will assume your answer has solved my problem, as I'm finding many of my questions answered at the site you gave me.
Once again, thank you very much.

Joe - Thailand