Re: The /crypt method to support habitual clean installs of Fedora without losing data

Temlakos <temlakos@xxxxxxxxx> · Wed, 2 May 2018 17:49:54 -0400



    On 05/02/2018 05:39 PM, Samuel Sieb
      wrote:

    
    On
      05/02/2018 02:24 PM, Temlakos wrote:
      

      One of you (I don't know who it was)
        shared with me an excellent method of making possible a clean
        reinstallation of Fedora--going above and beyond the "manual
        upgrade" described in the Installation Guide, that amounts to
        erasing the /root directory but leaving alone all other
        directories, not only /home but /usr, /etc, /bin, /tmp, /var,
        and any others I might have left out. This method preserves user
        data on a physically separate filesystem (an HDD or SSD). But it
        does not mount this separate filesystem as /home. The /home
        directory remains a part of the main filesystem and gets erased
        and reinaugurated, just like /usr, /etc, /var, and all the rest
        of them.
        

      I really don't understand what the benefit of this is.  Your /home
      directory should be on a separate partition from / and won't be
      erased even with a full reinstall of the OS.
      

      $ sudo mkdir /crypt
        

        $ sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb2 /crypt
        

        (Here I start with "$ sudo" instead of "#" because to get a "#"
        prompt I have to execute "su," and that can be dangerous.)
        

      How is "su" dangerous?  Either way you're running a command as
      root.  I generally use "sudo -i" to get to a root prompt.
      

      The syntax for establishing a symlink is
        even simpler:
        

        ln -s /crypt/UserName/Dir
        

        where UserName is the name of a specific created user, and Dir
        is Documents, Pictures, Music, Public, Templates, Videos, and
        anything else I want to preserve from one iteration of Fedora to
        the next. Of course I have to remove the "hard" directories that
        Fedora normally sets up before I execute these link commands.
        

      Are you trying to remove all the user configuration files as
      well?  If so, then just turn on "show hidden files" in Nautilus
      and delete the dot directories.  But of course, only do that if
      you really want to have to reconfigure everything again.
      

      The use of "/crypt" suggests that the original use may have been
      to only encrypt some parts of the user folders, but that still
      seems way too complicated to be useful.
      

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    Here is the primary benefit I derived from this method. Each
      user's home directory has a number of hidden files (whose names
      begin with a dot) that contain configuration variables. After
      several iterations of the operating system, errors accumulate in
      those files. This results as much from the sheer obsolescence of
      certain configuration files and their parameters as from careless
      handling of the desktop. In my case, I had several icons of
      Mozilla Firefox in my system tray that I could not for the life of
      me remove. Furthermore, a password manager I liked to use, simply
      refused to load.
    Mounting /home on a separate filesystem does nothing to solve the
      problem of the accumulated errors of configuration. You asked
      whether I have to reconfigure everything. That's just it: yes.
      Because especially after several iterations of "dnf
      system-upgrade," the configuration is a mess!

    
    But mounting user data, like the contents of Documents, Pictures,
      etc., and even the contents of hidden application-specific
      directories like .mozilla (for Firefox) and .thunderbird, does
      eliminate the problem. The errant files get erased with the rest
      of the filesystem, but the good user data remains.
    Now for that matter, I remind you that if you're going to mount a
      separate file system as /home, you still have to use a command
      that will make the mounting permanent and not something you have
      to execute every time you start the system up. So maybe you can
      tell me what the syntax of the mount command would be for that.
      I'm sure I can adapt that to the system I borrowed from that other
      user.
    By the way: the danger of "su" is the danger of continuous
      operations as root, and forgetting that you are in fact logged in
      as root. Whereas "sudo" gives you superuser privileges for that
      command only, then reverts you to a non-privileged state. That
      stops you from deleting a root-owned directory by accident.

    
    Temlakos

    
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