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My co-worker has an old laptop with Ubuntu 10.04 installed on it. About a week ago I backed up her /home directory using rsync, and kept it on an external HD. Now, she got a new laptop with Ubuntu 11.04.

I am still pretty new to the Ubuntu file system, so my question is this: Can I just rsync an Ubuntu 10.04 /home backup onto an Ubuntu 11.04 machine? Are there any directories I should not copy from the backup?

Jorge Castro
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Darkshore Grouper
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2 Answers2

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There are a great many differences between how Gnome is configured in 10.04 and how it's configured in 11.04. While you might loose some settings from the 10.04 desktop I would strongly recommend leaving the .gconf, .gnome, .gnome2, .gnome2_private, .gconf, .gconfd, .config, and .conf folders behind. Moving these over from 10.04 to 11.04 have a high potential for corrupting the desktop. I would also recommend making a tar'd backup of the /home folder prior to any moves.

Marco Ceppi
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  • there are changes to the .conf folder as well. I would suggest to leave that one out as well. The new desktop has .conf/dconf/user which is generated by dconf tools which was not present in 10.04. PS: These above mentioned folders are hidden folders and you can view them by pressing Ctrl + H . – Ubuntuser May 24 '11 at 12:23
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Since you've used rsync you should have an exact copy of your friend's dir on your machine. There should not be any problems with copying between any other machines now.

The only to take care of is file owner.

Marcin Cylke
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  • @MarcinCycle Thanks! but are there no differences between the versions? 10.04 and 11.04 –  May 24 '11 at 11:46
  • there may be differences as to version of rsync, but this should not influence the data you are sending, so you should not worry about that. –  May 24 '11 at 11:49
  • You should worry about it. – Marco Ceppi May 24 '11 at 12:02