Introduction
When transitioning from YDL 2.3 to YDL 3.0, you will of course desire to preserve as much information as is possible. While it is important to archive your entire home directory and move it to a backup partition, drive, or server, please note it is not advised to simply extract that archive into a YDL 3.0 environment and attempt to force the settings to match. This can cause rather painful results with a very confused desktop environment.
As the desktop managers, such as KDE and Gnome, and their related applications have changed drastically from YDL 2.3 to YDL 3.0, it is highly advised that you extract your archive in a non-active /home/ directory, such as /home/temp/
But let's start at the top!
To archive your home directory, at the command line, login as root, then:
cd /home/ [ENTER]
tar -czvf [archive-name].tar.gz [account-name] [ENTER]
mv [archive-name].tar.gz [new-location]
(where the new location is a safe place that will not be formatted)
WARNING! When you install YDL 3.0, do not create a user account that matches the exact name of the directory that will be created when you extract your archive or you may run the risk of overwriting your entire home directory.
When you are complete with the YDL 3.0 installation, you must retrieve that data again. At the command line, login as root, then:
cd /home/ [ENTER]
cp [new-location]/[archive-name].tar.gz ./[ENTER]
tar -xzvf [archive-name].tar.gz [ENTER]
If you view your home directory ('ll' or 'ls -al'), you will find both the new user account(s) you created during installation of YDL 3.0 and the extracted "tar ball" archive.
Now that the tar ball is extracted, it is tempting to move everything into your home directory at once. However, this will cause problems as applications have changed and even some of core elements, such as how or where the preferences are stored may have mutated.
Let's take Kmail for instance. It is safest, wisest, and in the long run simplest to move only the "Mail" directory from the extracted tar ball to your new home directory. Then launch KMail, and yes, you will need to set up your preferences and filters again. The address book should import fairly easily.
This holds true for a number of applications, whereby is may seem painful, but to copy the bookmarks, address books, and data one section at a time is the safest route.
REMEMBER! Always exit an application before you copy new data into its associated directories and preferences files.
This HOWTO was created by Kai Staats, Terra Soft Solutions
