Transfer 17.3 home to 19.1 home [SOLVED]

[paulxx]

Been running 17.3 since 2017 and very pleased with it.
I decided to upgrade to 19.1 and everything went ok.
I now have a choice at boot, 17.3 with all my old stuff; bookmarks, software etc, or 19.1 with none of my old stuff.

How can I transfer all my old stuff to 19.1?

thanks
paul

[WharfRat]

Hello paulxx

Welcome to Linux Mint and the Linux Mint forum

I use rsync for thing like this. I just did it when I installed 19.1 alongside 18.3.

From your home folder mount your 17.3 partition to /mnt and use sudo rsync -naiuv --progress -stats /mnt/home/yourname/ .

That's a dry run. If everything looks good then remove the n - sudo rsync -aiuv --progress -stats /mnt/home/yourname/ .

That will transfer everything from your old home except newer files in your current home.

Good luck

[Wompoo]

Hello paulxx
.........................................
From your home folder mount your 17.3 partition to /mnt ........................
Good luck

I am interested in further details please WR.
Fist of all; how to I Mount the 17.3 partition to /mnt ?
And how does this work; do you copy the output to a USB stick, then close the first operating system, and then boot up the new one etc.?

[deepakdeshp]

Boot from your 19 os. Do you know which partition is Mint 17? SUppose its sda7. To mount it on /mnt the command would be

Code: Select all

sudo mount /dev/sda7 /mnt

ls /mnt would show you the 17.3 files.
Now you can use the rsync command first with dry run and then the actual command.

[decrepit]

Or you can just make a desktop link in 19.1 to you 17.3 home, then you aren't using extra memory with two lots of data.
But no good if you'r going to delete 17.3

[AndyMH]

If you copy over all the config files from 17.3 you may get some problems with 19.x with some apps. I had this problem with evolution (email) when migrating from 18.3 to 19.0.

[TI58C]

Hi, paulxx,

I agree, do not copy all the (hidden, starting with ".") config directories /files.

Recently went from 17.3 (still using it now, SHAME) , to 19.1.

I did clean install on new box
- transferred all packages I wanted to keep.
- copied home-dir old box to new box. Without ! the config dirs.
- then copied .mozilla, firefox profile + libreoffice profile. Other config dirs only if needed /problems,

Thread here may be of interest:

viewtopic.php?f=90&t=292381#p1622897


Robert

[WharfRat]

If you copy over all the config files from 17.3 you may get some problems with 19.x with some apps. I had this problem with evolution (email) when migrating from 18.3 to 19.0.

The 'u' option will skip files that are newer on the receiver so there shouldn't be any problems in that context.

[paulxx]

Thanks for helping me out here WharfRat (and thanks to deepakdeshp for clarifying the /mnt ).

I carried out those three instructions and everything seemed to go well, no errors reported. And all my old stuff from v18.3 appeared on my desktop in v19.1. So it all looked good.

But when I did a restart, I can't get past the login screen. I enter my password and the screen goes black as normal but then the login screen re-appears.

If I enter an invalid password I get the message "invalid password". But when I enter my valid password the screen goes black for 2 seconds then re-appears asking for a password.

It's not a crisis as I have normal access to v18.3 and all my stuff is still there. However I would like to move on to v19.1.

Any ideas?

paul

[WharfRat]

That's odd

I've never experienced that. I always disable the login requirement when installing.

I'm on 18.3 now, but if Tessa has the login window on the menu, try disabling it there and see if that stops it then try enabling again..

[paulxx]

By "menu" do you mean the list of os I can boot after a restart?. If so, i've just been there and can't find an option to disable the login password.

I'm thinking of uninstalling v19.1, then re-installing it, then doing the transferring of my stuff from 18.3 to the new v19.1. My reasoning is that perhaps something went wrong in the transfer.

What do you think?

[WharfRat]

Not the grub menu - the Login Window application from the Mint menu.

[paulxx]

How do I get to that, if I can't get past login?

[WharfRat]

I misunderstood your post - I thought you had to enter it twice

Try this - mount the 19.1 partition in 18.3 to /mnt

Then goto /mnt/etc/lightdm and check the content of the lightdm.conf

Mine looks like this:

Code: Select all

[bill@XPS] /mnt/etc/lightdm $ cat lightdm.conf
[Seat:*]
autologin-guest=false
autologin-user=bill
autologin-user-timeout=0
[bill@XPS] /mnt/etc/lightdm $ 

Try setting autologin-user=bill to your user name

[paulxx]

Hello WharfRat, I've got good news and bad news. I'll give you the good news first.

I've got 19.1 running ok, the login problem is resolved and I have successfully transferred my /home folder from 18.3 to 19.1. Great! Those 3 sudo instructions worked just fine.

The bad news is that in attempting to create more space on my hard disk for 19.1, I seem to have messed up the access to 18.3.
I used gparted (for the first time) and although I managed to create a lot more space for 19.1, I can no longer get past the login for 18.3. I get a warning message which says something like "Can't write to authorisation file or you have not enough diskspace".

I'm thinking I've either messed up the partitions or the grub.

Any ideas?
paul

[WharfRat]

When you used gparted to resize the partition did you drag it from left to right

If yes then that breaks grub on a msdos partitioned disk.

I'm not sure if the same circumstance would pertain to a gpt partitioned disk.

Also is it possible that you collapsed it too small thereby corrupting the file system altogether

[paulxx]

Both of those things are possible. I did not find gparted easy to use.

I've got a screenshot of my partitions from gparted if that would help. How do I include it in a post here?

[WharfRat]

Both of those things are possible. I did not find gparted easy to use.

I've got a screenshot of my partitions from gparted if that would help. How do I include it in a post here?

Just below the area where you enter your response there's an Attachments tab and in that tab is an Add files button, choose that, browse to your screen shot and then there should be a place in line option.

[paulxx]

[paulxx]

/sda1 is my old 18.3.
/sda2, don't know.
sda7 is my new 19.1 ( I think).
sda6 is, I think a broken version of 19.1 that I can't access.