reinstalling

yak8998 · 2004-09-30 23:05:48

The storms made my computer go totally fubar. I made an attempt to fix what I could, but now I'm at my wits end. The kernel is horribly sluggish, half my applications won't start, and so on and so forth. So I want to try and reinstall. The thing is I don't want to lose my current config files and such. So, besides backing them up, how else can I do a nice reinstall? I'm thinking I may just nuke my windows partition and use that, since my 2k install is gone as well. Any suggestions?

phrakture · 2004-09-30 23:15:15

just do it again - it's good practice 8)

Dusty · 2004-09-30 23:45:03

phrakture wrote:

just do it again - it's good practice 8)

That's not terribly helpful given the question.

Its possible that the issues you are having is in the old config files, not in the installed programs. So recovering the configs would... break things.

Before you go to wiping out windows (er... why didn't you do it sooner?) and installing Arch, you *could* try writing a script that automatically uninstalls and reinstalls all the packages. I don't think that would do much for you, but its slightly easier than reinstalling and copying configs over by hand.

something like:

pacman -Sy
for package in `pacman -Q`
  pacman -Rd package
  pacman -S package
done

erm... that's not correct bash but, you get the picture.

Dusty

yak8998 · 2004-10-01 04:10:33

I just kept my old install, and installed a 2nd copy of arch. as soon as i get it fully running ill do something else with the old copy.

everything is nice n fast now, works perfect. i love it
im a pro-show at installing arch now, ive done it too many freaking times =/

phrakture · 2004-10-01 14:24:40

The reason for me saying "reinstall" is this:
if storms screwed up your computer and you lost partitions and corrupted files, there's a good chance there's alot of missing data and bad sectors all over the place (power surges are funny like that).

I would reinstall in order to correct this.... run something like knoppix so you can back up any important data (to CD or network share... or gmail) and just wipe the whole drive...

just my 2 scents

sarah31 · 2004-10-01 15:18:00

reinstall your root only.

back up any root config files you want to your home partition (remember most of your personalization is store in dotfiles in your ~/).

stick in the install cd

mount just your root partition (do not repartition or mount your /home!!!)

reinstall packages kernel and bootloader

set your fstab making sure to include your /home partition info so it is mounted at boot

reboot

setup your root pw and user and then you may have to reset ownershipor permission on some or many of tyour ~/ files for them to be activated again.

i have done this a few times and it saves a whale load of time reconfigging everything.

colnago · 2004-10-01 16:05:04

My 2 cents...

I would burn /var/cache/pacman/pkg/* to cd (usually only 1 or 2), then tar up /etc (not very big usually) and all of your user(s) /home/* area (this may be a problem depending upon the size). Reinstall the base system only from the 0.7 beta cd. Then copy the 1 or 2 pacman cds back into /var/cache/pacman/pkg/. Now you can pacman -Sy once to get the newest db and then just install the packages from the cache. If there was a corruption pacman is smart enough to tell you and stop, then you can delete the offending file from the cache dir and it will get it from the net next time. Expand your /etc into a temp area and edit the files as you wish.

Arch Linux

#1 2004-09-30 23:05:48

reinstalling

#2 2004-09-30 23:15:15

Re: reinstalling

#3 2004-09-30 23:45:03

Re: reinstalling

#4 2004-10-01 04:10:33

Re: reinstalling

#5 2004-10-01 14:24:40

Re: reinstalling

#6 2004-10-01 15:18:00

Re: reinstalling

#7 2004-10-01 16:05:04

Re: reinstalling

Board footer