Arch Linux

kelnoky

Member

Registered: 2007-11-20

Posts: 135

Everything I need to migrate my system?

Hey guys,

so my system is pretty old and I am going to upgrade my motherboard, CPU, RAM and SSD soon. I want to start with a fresh arch install, even though this current one has been with me for about 13 years. However, it's obviously been configured to my liking and I am afraid that I will forget to carry over some crucial config and have to redo a bunch of work to get it back to how I like it. So I am asking about what I could be forgetting when migrating my stuff to a new install, so far I have these configs in my backup folder:

- everything for my Xmonad
- fstab (I have a lot of HDDs that will be in the next system as well, I assume the UUIDs stay the same?)
- mpd config
- eMail exports
- .xinitrc
- .Xresources
- .zprofile
- .zshrc

What could be missing?

Last edited by kelnoky (2022-01-04 19:31:24)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,500

Website

Re: Everything I need to migrate my system?

What could be missing?

How on earth could we know - this all depends on what you have installed and configured.  But backing up /etc/ and ~/.config (or any other XDG_CONFIG_HOME you use) will get you most of the way there regardless of what software you use.  Add to this a few 'dot' files in your home folder for software that doesn't use ~/.config (or XDG_CONFIG_HOME).

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

jonno2002

Member

Registered: 2016-11-21

Posts: 889

Re: Everything I need to migrate my system?

o god why ? ..... WHY
there is absolutely no need to re-install, the system will just work, and at worst may need a few little tweaks if you change from amd to intel or ati to nvidia etc.....

if your system needs a clean up then clean it:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System … filesystem

closest analogy i can think of is taking everything out of your house and throwing it in the bin then going and buying the exact same shit to replace it and putting it all back in the same house in the same place with a bit of cleanup in the process.
me personally, i would much rather just clean the house......

madness!

Alad

Wiki Admin/IRC Op

From: Bagelstan

Registered: 2014-05-04

Posts: 2,420

Website

Re: Everything I need to migrate my system?

You can use something like aconfmgr or pacreport --unowned-files to identify accumulated "cruft". Identifying what this "cruft" is will be less trouble and more insightful than simply starting over.

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Mods are just community members who have the occasionally necessary option to move threads around and edit posts. -- Trilby