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I have copied over my /home directory, and it works, but what else do I need?
I know i need to overwrite some files in /etc, but I don't know which ones to copy and which ones should not be overwritten.
Would appeciate some advice, thanks.
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A lot of this depends on what you have installed, and what configurations you've edited. If you've written any overrides in /etc/systemd/system (find them with find /etc/systemd -name 'override.conf'), or have customized any configurations of any of the applications, services, or daemons in /etc, you'll want to keep those. What you may want to do is copy the entire /etc from the old system to a subdirectory of your ${HOME} directory on the new system, so once you realize you need something you can retrieve it.
Also, if you've installed any software outside of pacman (or any AUR helpers), you'll want to copy all of that over. These could be in /opt, /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/sbin, but these are just examples.
But really, this is what installing Arch is all about. You should know what you've installed (you can check /var/log/pacman.log to see if anything jogs your memory), and what you've configured or customized. With such a vague question no one can possibly be very specific about what you need to keep.
I would NOT copy system files like /etc/passwd, /etc/group, or /etc/shadow, since those should be rebuilt as you bring the new system to fully operational status.
I use etckeeper to back up each of my systems to a private Git repository, but you seem too late in the process to go that route.
Last edited by ectospasm (2024-02-19 02:43:34)
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Thanks for getting back to me.
What I get from your advice is really that I need to get to know arch (and perhaps linux in general) better than I already do. I have a pretty good idea of what I've installed, but I don't always know where programs and/or their configuration files are put in the first place, or even what really distinguishes system files that should not be copied as you mention.
In any case, I copied my etc folder to my new home dir as you suggested and tried copying pretty much all of it over to the new etc dir. As it turned out, I neglected earlier to reinstall some non-pacman software, so when I booted up I got some related errors that needed to be recitified, but otherwise it seems to be working ok.
But I definitely want to know more about all this for next time, whenever that may be.
I don't know much about backing up with Git repositories, but my arch installation is not very large so I will have a look a the etckeeper program you mentioned, it may not be too late to try.
Last edited by mrconfused (2024-02-19 09:22:14)
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