Arch Linux

chrispoole

Member

Registered: 2008-12-30

Posts: 121

Changing laptop --- what to note?

I'm changing my Arch-running laptop. Sticking with i686 though, and I still want the same setup.

Currently I'm thinking of doing the following:

- Backup /etc and /home
- Store pacman package list for easy reinstall
- Run through the install guide on new laptop, to get a basic system running
- Copying /home from old laptop
- Running pacman, installing packages in package list I generated

Are there any issues I've not thought about, or things I should be aware of?

(Obviously laptop-specific stuff should be disregarded, and I'll change the flags in makepkg.conf (I'm moving from atom to core2duo).)

Thanks!

Wra!th

Member

Registered: 2009-03-31

Posts: 342

Re: Changing laptop --- what to note?

Make sure you backup any system files that you may have altered during your old install (like wicd config, rc.conf, cpuscaling configs etc). No need in backing up all of /etc IMO.
Other than that, your $HOME is the important one, the rest can be reinstalled.
Take 5 minutes to look over all the saved files/directories before (or if) you format the old one.
I recently reinstalled, backed everything up, but somehow my scrips and my coding directory were not in the backup. I lost them all...
So extra caution is a must

Last edited by Wra!th (2009-04-10 10:57:13)

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chrispoole

Member

Registered: 2008-12-30

Posts: 121

Re: Changing laptop --- what to note?

Thanks.

I tar.gz /etc every few weeks or so anyway.

Yea, I have a pretty decent backup strategy. My Linux ~/ is rsynced from my Mac ~/ every few days. Most of this (except videos and music) is rsynced to Strongspace, on a different continent to me. I also use TimeMachine for incremental backups of my entire machine, and periodically image the Mac's drive to an external USB drive. And then, just to make sure, I periodically backup really important stuff to DVD (using good Taiyo Yuden media).