On Thursday 09 October 2025 at 21:46:46, Steve Litt wrote:

> As a result of this bad decision 40 years ago, if you simply restore
> $HOME, a lot of stuff is likely to break or conflict with config
> installed by the package manager and not intended to be modified.

I think there's a big difference between "restoring", which I take to mean
"putting files onto a machine which is working the same way as the old one was"
(it may *be* the old machine, repaired in some way, or it may be a
replacement, but it's running the same basic system) and "migrating", which
could include upgrading the underlying system at the same time as moving the
files across.

Backing up and restoring $HOME, no matter what it contains, should work on a
machine which had a disk failure, or is getting a new partition, etc.

Doing the same thing between releases of an Operating System, or upgrades in
applications, is not a backup / restore, in my opinion.

> Knowing that my computers are single user, I put most of my data under
> /d , which I created and chowned slitt:slitt just for this purpose.

I keep all my data under /home/antony

> When I transfer to a new computer, I copy the old computer's /home to the
> new computer's /oldhome, and let installation have its way with the new
> /home.

I copy /home/antony on the old machine to /home/antony on the new one, and
then also to /home/antony/<datestamp> on the new one. I've never upgraded a
machine without getting at least twice the amount of disk capacity from the
old one.

That allows new applications which can understand the old version's
configuration files to use / upgrade them, without me having to reconfigure
everything from scratch, plus....

> Then, as the months go by and I find files missing or configs that used to be
> and need to be specially coded, I copy those files from the /oldhome
> tree to the /home tree.

I copy from /home/antony/<datestamp>/path to /home/antony/path, and gradually
delete the duplicate files which I really don't need the old copies of any
more.

> By doing it the way I do it, I avoid most of the "ghosts from operating
> systems past" that show up on traditional "copy /home from the old
> computer to the new computer" installs.

I get the benefit of upgrading applications which can understand their
predecessors' config files, and use them without asking me to explain it all
over again.


YMMV, as they say.


Antony.

--
Anyone that's normal doesn't really achieve much.

- Mark Blair, Australian rocket engineer

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