Re: How to install an OS safely -was: Upgrade from 9.3 to 10.3 completely botched

Mark S Bilk wrote:
The most serious problem here is the possible loss of your data.
If you have a recent backup of it, then you can go on trying to
install 10.3 on your current hard drive, and when you're done,
if the data on the drive has been destroyed, copy it from your
backup.

If you do not have a backup, then your data is not importand to you
anyway.


There's always a possibility that installing or upgrading an OS
will destroy your data, through flaws in the installer or user
error, e.g., miscounting partitions.

Yep, happend to me almost.

I figure the installer could destroy any partition of any disk in the
computer, without warning.

I figure there is a warning. Well, I do not figure, I know there is a
warning. People who made the mistake will probably say that the warning
was not big enough or loud enough, whil in effect they try to blame the
installation for not reading the error message. It is even in red.

The installer of a good OS like SuSE won't do that,
but I might _misunderstand_ the warning. And I always do clean
installs, not upgrades, and then copy from the old config files
to the new ones manually. A clean install requires much less
intelligence from the installer program than an upgrade does.

Yep, that is what I do as well. And that for two reasons. It keeps on my
toes, I have a fallback to go to and I clean up my system (did I just
say two reasons? Well pick any two.)

So I never do an installation onto a drive containing the only
copy of precious data. I never do an installation if there's
even a different drive on the system containing the only copy.
Disks are very cheap these days, about 25 cents/gigabyte. The
best approach is to buy a new one and install the new OS on it.

So if you don't have a recent backup, here's the safe way to
proceed:

1. Obtain another hard drive big enough to hold your data, plus
room for expansion, and the new OS,

I do it differently. I have two 'small' HD's for alternating
instalations, one 'big' one for data and another 'big' one for backup.
The small ones are 10 and 40GB. I would not call them small and they are
pretty well capapble of having the ability to each hold all of an
openSUSE installation.
the large ones are 160GB.

2. Remove the old drive containing your data from the computer,
and put in the new one as the first drive on the system
(i.e., on the lowest disk controller port number). Of course
all connections and disconnections of disk drives must be
done with the power off!

I do not do that. My PC is not easy accesible. It is a risk I am wiling
to take, as I have my most precious data backed up anyway and I won't be
formatting more then 1 HD.

3. Install 10.3 on the new drive (from the GM DVD), get all the
updates, and make sure that it boots correctly.

Yep. And you can even do it from HD, but that is another story.

4. Reconnect the old drive on a higher numbered port, to insure
that the BIOS continues to boot the new drive.

I do not do that either. I just adapt grub and also see to it that both
sda and sdb (used to be hda and hdb) can boot. With [CTRL][ESC] during a
boot, I am able to select wich device I want to boot from, so I do not
have to go into bios during the DVD installation. :-D

5. Boot up the OS on the new drive.

Check.

6. Mount the data partition(s) of the old drive (which the
previous attempted installation hopefully did not destroy)
read-only onto the directory tree of the new one.

I first run it for a day or so. Howver what I did was have NO different
/home partition. So after a first check, I mount my old /home, next I
mount my old /data and then my old /backup. That will give me access to
all my old config files.

7. Copy your data from the old drive onto the new one. Make sure
that "du -s" shows approximately the same amount of data on
the old and new drives. Spot-check a few data files on the
new drive. Breathe a sigh of relief if your data is OK and
you now have two copies of it.

I do not do that either.

8. Remove the old drive completely from the computer and keep it as
a backup, and run with the new drive.

It depends on how much space you still have, but I would let that drive
in and at least use it for when 11.0 (Yeah, it goes to eleven) comes
out.

This conservative procedure is guaranteed not to destroy your
precious data (if you know how to mount a partition read-only
and copy files). It may cost you additional money -- $120 will
buy a good Seagate 500GB SATA drive if you shop around and
look for a sale, e.g., at Fry's electronics, if there's one near you.
But consider how much time and work was involved in collecting
your data, and how important it is to you.

I would buy TWO similar HD's One for data/installation and the other for
backup. Well, what I have is four. 1 for current /, one for old/new /.
One for pure data and /home and the other for backup.

All in all a very good post, but to me a bit too paranoid, especialy
with the removing of the HD. Even IF I would have deleted my data after
not paying attention, I would have just restored the data. But backing
up to a second drive is importand, regardless.

houghi
--
Theologians can pursuade themselves of anything. Anyone who can worship
a trinity and insists that his religion is a monotheism can believe
anything -- just give him time to rationalize it.
Robert A. Heinlein, JOB: A Comedy of Justice
.

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