[SOLVED] Moving Home Folder to new computer with Mint 15

[cheZ]

i have successfully installed Mint 15 ( Cinnamon 64bit ) onto a new Lenovo y580 Laptop , and now i must move my Home Folder onto the new y580 from my old laptop ( running Mint 11 64bit ). i have done this before in the past a couple of times , but wanted to ask for some clarification on a couple of things before i do it again.
i don't need to do a full backup & restore ( using mint backup , and frankly mint backup has been problematic for me in the past ) , as i plan to only move my most important personal data ( Home folder ) which consists of ; text documents ( in gedit ) , stand-alone link files from firefox ( dragged to desktop and saved as a file ) , various folders , various picture / movie / music files , openshot files , pdf files.
i plan to use Firefox SYNC to get all my passwords / prefs / add-ons / bookmarks onto the new laptop ( which already has a fresh install of Mint 15 & Firefox installed ).
i have set-up the new computer / mint 15 with the same admin password & name as my old computer.
my question is , should i possibly expect any problems with permissions or possibly unreadable stand-alone link files or text documents , etc ... if i simply move my Home folder ( and it's contents ) onto an external hard drive ....and then move it to the new computer ( inside the new Home folder ).
any advice & expert opinions appreciated , thanks guys !

[WharfRat]

cheZ,

A little trick for firefox. There's a .mozilla folder in your home folder. In the terminal you can move it to a different name e.g., .mozilla.new then use cp -a to copy your old .mozilla folder and everything will be as if you were running it on the old computer.

If you should run into any type of permission problem, just start your file manager with sudo or gksudo in the terminal, then reset the owner when your done.

Good luck

[cheZ]

hi WharfRat ~ thanks very much for taking the time to reply , although ....even though i read your advice / instructions over and over more times than i care to mention , it still has me a bit confused. not being a terminal person so much ( i only enter simple commands / scripts that others understand much better than i ....and i rarely enter very many of them ...only for the occasional install / update etc.. ) , i can't seem to make much sense of your advice , although both tips sound perfect for what i am doing. any possibility that you can elaborate or maybe offer a more detailed step by step on those ? thanks in advance all the best ! ~ cheZ

[kukamuumuka]

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rsync -avz /target/ /destination

Note! there must be / after target! An example:

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rsync -avz /home/ /media/destination

http://linux.fi/wiki/Rsync
http://translate.google.fi/translate?sl=fi&tl=en&prev=_t&hl=fi&ie=UTF-8&u=http://linux.fi/wiki/Rsync

[WharfRat]

hi WharfRat ~ thanks very much for taking the time to reply , although ....even though i read your advice / instructions over and over more times than i care to mention , it still has me a bit confused. not being a terminal person so much ( i only enter simple commands / scripts that others understand much better than i ....and i rarely enter very many of them ...only for the occasional install / update etc.. ) , i can't seem to make much sense of your advice , although both tips sound perfect for what i am doing. any possibility that you can elaborate or maybe offer a more detailed step by step on those ? thanks in advance all the best ! ~ cheZ

Lets say your files are on a flash drive mounted at /media/flash. Close firefox and in the terminal change to or make sure you're in your home folder

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cd ~

Move the .mozilla folder

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mv .mozilla .mozilla.save

Now copy your files from the flash drive

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cp -a /media/flash/.mozilla .

For the file manager I use the Mate desktop so it's caja

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sudo caja&

or you can enter

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sudo -i

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caja&

That will start the file manager with escalated privileges.

Good luck

[cheZ]

hi WharfRat & administrollaattori ~ thank you both very much for all that percise info, i sincerely appreciate it because both methods were bit beyond my scope of understanding regarding Terminal commands etc... . i ended up sticking with the simplistic method i have used in the past with Mint of simply making a copy of the .mozzila hidden folder ( that resides in Mint's Home folder ) and moving that ( along with all my other standard non-hidden Home Folder contents such as Desktop , Pictures , Documents etc , as one can only move the contents of a Home Folder because the Home Folder itself will not allow itself to moved as a complete stand-alone folder onto an external hard drive ) to an external 500gb USB 3.0 Hard Drive ( that i prepared beforehand by formatting this external Hard Drive in ext4 with the GParted utility ) , and then simply migrating / moving it all onto my new computer with drag and drop off the external hard drive. it worked out fine ( im typing this from the new computer now ) , and this method maintained all my data ( approx. 80gb or so ) ....and once i replaced the default .mozilla folder with my old one ( in the new computer's Home Folder , must allow hidden folders in " view "to see it , then deleting the default .mozilla folder and replacing with the .mozilla folder that i moved over on external HD ) , all was perfect and as it was exactly on my old computer ... all ad-ons / extentions / themes / bookmarks & passwords carried over to the new version Firefox ( version 24 ) and worked perfectly.
on a side note , i actually tried to use a Firefox add-on called FEBE that claims to make a perfect Firefox profile backup ( and could supposedly restore it easily ) , but it was dreadful and did not work at all ( very buggy ) , and i do NOT recommend this FEBE add-on to anyone. however , if one is migrating from one computer to another as i did , and both the old and new computer have an active online connection , there is always the option to simply use Firefox Sync ( in the tools menu in Firefox ) , as that will , from what i have read ( https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fi ... s-with-you ), sync all one's Firefox data ( everything including profile / add-ons / extensions / passwords ) from the home computer onto another computer ( or device like a tablet etc ) that has Firefox installed on it. one must first set up Firefox Sync on the home or base computer to use this " Sync " method. just thought it was worth passing that info along for anyone who may need it. once again , thank you both for all of your kind help , tips & advice. all the best to you both ! - cheZ

[cheZ]

oh , and a big P.S. ~ if anyone has to install the latest Adobe flash version for Firefox in Mint 15 ( or for an earlier version of Mint ) , here is the simplest method ; simply open Software Manager , then type in flash in the search field , you will see adobe-flashplugin in the search results , highlight & click on it , then click install. this will give your the latest ( and last supported ) Adobe Flash Plug-In player version ( 11.2.202.310 installed ).
you can then test your flash version here ; [url]http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/[/url]
i myself have Mint 15 64bit Cinnamon installed on my computer ( i7 Lenovo y580 ) and this version of Flash works perfectly in Firefox version 24. i am not certain if there is a different flash plug-in version these days for 64bit operating systems / machines , and frankly i do not know if the installer package from Software Manager installed a 32bit or 64bit version on my computer , perhaps someone else would know how to check this , or would know percisely which version gets installed with the Software Manager package. on a side note , do not bother or attempt to install or use the Firefox add-on " Flash-Aid " as it no longer works and is now totally unsupported by it's author ( it hasn't been updated in 2 years ). ~ cheZ