How do the .whatever directories fare with a reinstall? Will a new 
install overwrite them or use them?

Austin Godber wrote:

>> Question from the newbie zone:  I am a RH9 user of a month or so;
>> comfortable enough now to give my WinXP box to my son. So I plan to rely
>> upon Linux for a long time.  (PLUG was a big factor in that feeling of
>> comfort!)  It's a desktop system.
>>
>> Are there any things I should be doing NOW (or avoid doing NOW) to make
>> that eventual upgrade or reinstall easier?  (I'm making this up now,
>> but) things like "make sure all your personal files are stored under
>> /home/username" or "if you install software, make sure you.." or "don't
>> ever change permissions on these folders..."  I guess I'm talking about
>> principles of good housekeeping / common errors newbies make, that would
>> come back with a vengeance when I update later...
> 
> 
> Well, keeping all of your personal files in one place is a good idea.  
> The OS is kinda setup to encourage that.  In addition to that I would 
> make /home its own partition, this way when you update you can just 
> leave that untouched (be aware that after keeping the same homedir fir 
> several years and OS installs you will build up a large number of 
> dotfiles (like .uligo in my homedir ... whats that??? actually I know 
> what it is, but only because I recently installed it, two months from 
> now I will have no clue) and a manual cleanup is eventually useful 
> albeit somewhat dangerous).
> 
> As for backing up (I burn a DVD+RW of /home/ every now and again on my 
> personal machines), that is a must.  In addition to backing up I keep my 
> homedir synchronized between three machines using unison.  It works 
> cross platform too (never tried it though).
> 
> Also, I keep a download directory where I try to keep software I have 
> had to download and install because they weren't with the standard 
> distribution.  This gets sizable but can be deleted most of the time 
> anyway since by the time you reinstall there will be a new version of 
> whatever you were saving.  I figured that since I have the drive space I 
> might as well use it though.  This is also less usefull since distros 
> have just been getting bigger and bigger.  There used to be a handfull 
> of libs I would have to keep around to reinstall onto a RH machine a few 
> years ago but this is no longer true.
> 
> As far as changing permissions on directories or files, you should be 
> careful about that for security reasons.
> 
> Good luck
> Austin
> 
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Robert Wultsch                   // \\        robert.wultsch@asu.edu
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