[Novalug] help (panic); know the problem but not what to do how.

Rich Kulawiec rsk@gsp.org
Tue Feb 27 08:26:09 EST 2018


On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 06:03:33PM +0000, Beartooth via Novalug wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Feb 2018, Charles R. Head via Novalug wrote:
> 
> >Do you make sure and *DO NOT format /home* when you reinstall the OS?
> 
> 	I would if I could.

A trick that I've used, and I strongly caution that it is NOT guaranteed
to work with all installers, is:

	1. Before letting the installer do its thing, open up a shell

	2. Create a scratch mount point, like /blah

		mkdir /blah

	3. Mount whatever partition has /home in it read-only on /blah

		mount -r /dev/sda3 /blah

	4. Let the installer run

This works at least some of the time because when the install process
gets around to formatting disk partitions, it will usually refuse to
touch one that's already mounted.  Note: "usually".  Don't try this
without a backup.  Or two.  Or three.  Also note that sometimes "refuse"
means "will skip it and move on to others" and sometimes it means
"will flag it as an error and quit".

---rsk



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