Arch Linux

[viking60]

Do you have home on a separate partition as it is? If so you can install Arch and format / and swap and leave /home as it is.
That should work just fine.
Example:
You have a fresh Arsh install (with no programs yet) and your full home. When you install thunderbird it will detect your .thunderbird directory in /home and all your e-mail history will be present in the new installation.

[dedanna1029]

Yes, that's what I'm wanting to do, and yes, it's a separate partition.

The question is, how do I do it?

Thanks.

[viking60]

Start installing and when you come to the partition part you must pick manual!!!! Pick ext2 for swap and ext4 for / and leave /home.
/home and / should have the same system so if you are using one of your exotic systems you should probably pick that for / (raiser? reiser?).
I don't think you have to but that is what Arch does if you pick the automated HD preparation.

[dedanna1029]

Okay, will give it a go, thanks. Reiserfs it is all the way, other than for swap. ext4 does sound good for / though. Thanks.

[viking60]

De nada! But I would consider a small backup first - call me a coward.
You should have no problems tho.. But you never now when you hit that wrong button

[dedanna1029]

Exactly. This is my problem with it. How to do it mechanically, what to choose, how to choose it - it's all very confusing to me in Arch's installer... yeah, a backup is a must. There's nothing concrete in the wiki on this, and what is there is very confusing. :\ There is nothing explicit in the installer to "mount and save /home" like there is in others.

[viking60]

Backup:
Home and /etc will get you a long way - Like the script in the software section does.
In /etc you have rc.conf and other stuff that you have configured so it can com in handy when setting up the new installation.
Arch Installer (After you have backed up):
Do the stuff until you get to the HD preparation That is where you have to be awake and not pick the Arch will do it for you option.
Pick a swap of 256 MB
/ of 17 Gigabyte
and the rest is for /home
Now you have the slight problem that you cannot adjust the size of /home because you are leaving it as is. That means that you have to take the rest of your space for /.
Or you could make a backup with the superduper script in the software section (did I mention that?). And let Arch set up all your partitions and then put back the content of your backed up home with rsync to your newly created /home.

[dedanna1029]

Yeah, already have the "how-I'm-gonna-do-it" for the backup, and the sizes of the partitions. It's the rest I didn't know. Where will I choose to format only / and /swap, and NOT /home? At what point?

So, do NOT pick the auto, pick the manual, right?

[viking60]

Just start the installation. Yiou will se a list that you have to complete. Preparing HD is no 5 or something. You cant miss it, It is pretty straight forward.
Also Arch will produce a warning about everything beeing deleted on the disk if you pick the wrong one.
That is when you go back a step and pick that manual option

[dedanna1029]

Okay. What I'll do is start it later on tonight my time. When I get to the part that I have the questions about, I'll post them here.

Thanks.

[viking60]

Sure we'll get you through it

[dedanna1029]

The question still remains though of what to edit, and how, to turn off hourly cron.

Well, what I've done is gone into cron using crontab -e and just rem'ed out the hourly line. Dunno if this will work, but we'll see.