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Pablo
Asked: 2011-10-21 10:45:30 +0800 CST

What does "System-wide settings will be cleared" mean?

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I'm reinstalling Ubuntu, and I see that there's this "upgrade" option that lets me reinstall Ubuntu while keeping files and software when possible, but says that "system wide settings" will be cleared. Are the config files and folders in my home folder ".something" go away with this or only things like sources.list? Thanks.

11.10

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I've tested the upgrade. I have a separate primary root (/) and a /home partition. During the upgrade the primary root partition was changed to logical, and the /home filesystem was retained as another logical partition, while having a new /home.

    The / was reformatted and thus the system-wide settings are cleared, but the old /home was saved onto a new partition. So it is possible to copy back old data to the new /home partition.

    Before upgrading, it is always advised to create backups from the key areas of the system. Eg.:

    • /home
    • /etc
    • /boot
    • And if you have any other software installed e.g. Apache, then its corresponding directories (in this case /var/www, /usr/lib/cgi-bin).
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