I need to reinstall Ubuntu, but it doesn't have anything to do with wanting to clean my system or 'start fresh.' I have my stuff pretty fine tuned, so I want to redo as little as possible.
-
1The idea of reinstalling is to clear any setting or programs that may have set your system awry. Why are you reinstalling?– RichardAug 19, 2013 at 2:46
-
@searchfgold6789 Honestly, because I want to dual boot windows, and the entire thing seems set up so that you can easily install ubuntu as a dual boot if windows is already installed. The other way seems possible but every piece of advice I've read (including here) is in incomprehensible linux-speak that nobody will explain to me, so I can't decipher how to do it at all. So the best way at my level of experience seems to be redoing everything with Windows first, so that everything will be automated.– TPaveLabelSep 1, 2013 at 21:06
-
I can post simpler (picture based) instructions on how to achieve your goal of installing Windows alongside Ubuntu without erasing any settings. You'll just have to edit your question to reflect this. Otherwise, I would recommend following parts 2 and 3 from @TerryWang's instructions.– RichardSep 2, 2013 at 1:19
-
See help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuReinstallation - You can reinstall Ubuntu and still keep a few settings.– RichardSep 2, 2013 at 1:22
-
@searchfgold6789 Okay. I'll edit my question to reflect that. That would be very helpful.– TPaveLabelSep 2, 2013 at 17:53
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
In brief
- Backup you
$HOME
or whatever partition, logical volumes that contains your personal data - Get a list of the installed packages
dpkg --get-selections > pkg.list
keep the file - When restoring the packages
sudo dpkg --set-selections < /path/to/pkg.list
andsudo apt-get dselect-upgrade
- Backup your
/etc
if you can't remember what changes you have made for tuning
You can use tar
or rsync
over SSH to a remote host. I personally recommend booting using a USB/DVD Live (e.g. Ubuntu Desktop or System Rescue CD) and do the backup just to avoid file lock issues, always safer;-)
-
The only small downside here is that all the packages will ends as manually installed, so they will not autoremove when needed. This is especially bad for the various kernel version; you can get stuck to a particular kernel for the future. But I don't think there is a perfect answer...– RmanoOct 2, 2014 at 9:51
-
Note that in step 3,
dpkg
may give you lots of warnings about the packages not being in the database. These are safe to ignore, as the actual installation happens in the next command with APT, which uses a different database. Jan 29, 2016 at 10:53