Friday, November 17, 2017

14.04 - How to reinstall ubuntu and preserve home directory




I am trying to reinstall Ubuntu after running into some pretty troublesome issues. I am following the directions here but I can't seem to figure out how to start the UbuntuInstaller like it's telling me to. My current setup involves a dual boot with a USB. Do I need to delete the contents of the USB and start over with how I originally installed it, or should I be doing something different from this?




I'm not sure if this is persistent live or fully installed - it was set up with this tutorial.



After spending the better part of a day on this, I finally have a good idea of what's going on. The installation package was on my flash drive, but Ubuntu itself was installed on the partition of my hard drive. So, the way to reinstall is to use the same flash drive that had the installation package and boot directly through that. This allows Ubuntu to do the installation process again, and about halfway through the installation process, you will have the option to either upgrade or install alongside the current version of Ubuntu, or "do something else". Since the installer version on my flash drive was actually older than the current version on the hard drive, I decided to re-download the most up-to-date version of Ubuntu on a new flash drive, and boot through that one instead. Then, using that, I chose the "do something else" option and was able to manually select the partition I wanted. The dialog box showed which one Ubuntu was already installed on, so I chose that partition, and then changed the mount point to '/'. Choosing this one meant that all of my stuff would stick around, and lo and behold, it did!



NOTE: if the version on the flash drive is newer than the version on the hard drive, your best bet is the upgrade option. This updates the OS but preserves all of your information/files/etc. I didn't have this option because my flash drive and hard drive versions ended up being the same.



This site contains a useful step-by-step guide, if you need any additional direction.


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