[SWLUG] Moving Linux

[Neil Greenwood]

On 27/08/06, Tony Pursell <ajp at princeswalk.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi All
>
> At long last I've got myself a new computer to play with. After a long
> struggle (don't ask for the details unless you have a genuine interest)
> Gparted did a brilliant job of shrinking the NTFS partition so I can now
> install Ubuntu on it. However, I will want to have it the same as on my old
> computer, with the exception that I will have larger partitions for root, usr,
> and var, and a much larger home.  What is the best way to ensure that I
> have all the same software and personal settings?  Can I just copy over the
> contents of the old usr and home (and possible, var).  Obviously, this is a
> very different PC with a dual core Pentium, SATA hard drive, flat screen,
> etc, etc so a straight copy of everything won't do.
>
> If anyone has done this sort of thing and can give me any tips, I would be
> very grateful.

You can look into partimage, which is in the 'universe' repository of
Ubuntu 6.06. It will take an image of the entire partition into a
single file. This will obviously only copy an entire partition though,
not individual files.

You can definitely copy home with no ill-effects. partimage would do
well here, if the old home directory tree was on it's own partition.
Just before you copy, I'd check in /etc/passwd (or the Users and
Groups option on the System > Administration menu if you're not a CLI
junkie) that your old/new users have the same UID.

/usr/local and /var/local *should* be OK to copy, although I've never
tried this. Otherwise, you can use dpkg with some options to list all
the installed packages on your old PC and then some other options on
your new PC to re-install them. Sorry to be so vague, but I've never
tried this either. I did something similar on cygwin back when I was
still using Windows on a regular basis.

Cheers,
Neil.