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I am in the process of upgrading my computers to 11.10.

I just did an upgrade on a Netbook from a Netbook version to 11.10 and although it works quite smoothly on this netbook It didn't save the home folder or my settings etc. I thought I had been careful to select the upgrade choice but..Maybe it was just that from Netbook>11.10 was a bridge to far...

I am about to update a dual core notebook from 10.04>11.10 and I have copied the home folder into the windows partition for now as I guess its safe there. I know I may have to do a complete new installation unless I leap frog on a 10.10 upgrade or something so I don't mind that as long as I can conserve some of my settings and bookmarks etc.

I can't see how to save the firefox bookmarks as I would like to copy them somewhere just in case (even if its only an htlm fine in home documents for now)

Can someone tell me if moving from 10.04>11.10 will be a wipe everything and just in case where I can go to get and copy the firefox bookmarks before I start.

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First, copying your home directory to a Windows partition isn't a good idea, because there are a few files in your homedir that have specific requirements for permissions, and those permissions will be lost on a Windows partition.

For a backup, you could make a tar archive of your files and store that archive anywhere. That would preserve all your permissions.

tar cjvf /windows/c/home_backup.tar.bz2 "$HOME"

As far as your Firefox data goes, all that info lives in a hidden directory under your home directory: ~/.mozilla/firefox. Back that up, and your Firefox bookmarks are safe.

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  • +1 :) Afterward (and obviously) copy the home_backup.tar.bz2 file to the Windows NTFS partition; and, after upgrading, copy home_backup.tar.bz2 back to Ubuntu for extraction. But not so obvious: make sure your Windows system was NOT HIBERNATED before trying to copy a file to it. If you copy a file to a hibernated Windows system, you will lose it; and, recovery software may not find it again.
    – user8290
    Dec 26, 2011 at 0:27
  • thank you guys.I think as its seems a bit particular I will copy the entire home directory to an external h\d formatted as Fat. then just copy it back to Ubuntu but as what and where exacty or I will have 2 home directories after Thanks...ps..will hidden directory under home directory: ~/.mozilla/firefox also be there with my bookmarks ?
    – Antony
    Dec 27, 2011 at 14:39
  • @Antony: I'm not sure I understand you correctly. Again, I don't recommend copying the files to a FAT partition, for the reasons I mentioned above. Copy it to ext2/3/4 or make a tarball. If you copy the directly exactly, then you can copy it back exactly. If you copy the home directory by name, then the ~/.mozilla directory will also get copied. But if you want, you can explicitly copy it. Dec 28, 2011 at 17:08

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