Linux Mint Forums

What's the best way to restore all of the users of a system after an upgrade?

Is it best to enter all of the users during the install, then restore /etc/passwd and /etc/group, and restore their home directories?

Or, is it possible to skip entering the users during the install and just restore the above files? I think I tried this during the last upgrade and ran into problems with the login screen.

Just wondering how people handle this. Especially if you have a lot of users. I just have a few on my system at home.

This would be a nice feature for Mint to add. Save all of the user info before the upgrade, and restore it after.

You will have all kinds of problems using the method you outline. Recreate the users after the install and restore data folders only, not the entire home folders.

remoulder wrote:You will have all kinds of problems using the method you outline. Recreate the users after the install and restore data folders only, not the entire home folders.

I would not be a happy camper if I came into work one day and my gnome settings were gone. I swap ctrl and caps lock, add icons to the taskbar, configure emacs keys for firefox etc. It's not a problem for me on my home system, but I don't think just restoring data files in a workplace is a good idea. Especially every 6 months.

I upgraded my laptop last night, and didn't reformat my /home. For my login, it went pretty smooth. I didn't have the main menu on the taskbar, nor the network manager applet. I've had this annoying problem with the main menu not going away when I choose an item. I had that problem with mint 8 also. I had installed the 64 bit mint 8 on an old 64 bit processor and it was very slow. I thought that might be the issue with the main menu, but this time I installed the 32 bit version and it's still there. I'll move my gnome directories and let them get rebuilt. Other users on this machine don't have the sticky menu.