On Saturday May 30th, I woke up and decided to backup my /home folders to the external USB hard drive and wipe out and reinstall Ubuntu 9.04 so I can experience the ext4 file system. Since I know this is a long process on my home PC, I started at 12:00 noon.
I ran Evolution first, caught my mail and ran the backup command located under File from the menu bar. After closing Evolution, I ran rsync -avh /home/ /media/New Volume/backup 05-30-2009 to backup 28.3 GB of data. After 8.5 hours, I was ready to rebuild. While working on this task, I watched the Pittsburgh Penguins play against the Detroit Red Wings for game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Go Pens (even though they lost)!
Since I have to share my PC with my family, and some people are afraid of Linux, I had to use the Windows XP Restore CD that came with my Dell Dimension 8200. I booted off the CD, ran Recovery Console and ran fixmbr and fixboot. This resets the MBR (Master Boot Record) back to a state of Windows only, no other operating systems available. Then of course I booted into Windows XP to verify the family can continue to use the PC.
I then booted off my new Ubutnu 9.04 CD that arrived a few weeks ago, and proceeded to install onto the second hard drive. In order to have ext4 as my file system, I had to select it from the drop down menu, and of course format each partition that would use ext4. The total install time on my PC was under 30 minutes. Heck, you can’t get a pizza under 30 minutes anymore, so I was very pleased.
The update manager started shortly after I logged onto the system for the first time. Afterwards, I rebooted and installed the NVIDIA GForce video card. Of course the cool Compiz 3-D effects didn’t work…and I was sad. However, everything else worked like a champ. I was on-line (because I downloaded my updates) and installed my HP Color LaserJet 2605dn network printer.
I also brought over the following folders
- .purple
- .mozilla
- .skype
- .fonts
Starting Evolution and having it reinstall everything from the backup I ran worked the way it should. All of my mail filter, addressbooks, mail folders, and the two different mail accounts were there. Since everything was working I closed Evolution.
I stared Pidgin and enter one of my AIM accounts and then closed the application. I copied the .purple folder into my home directory so the rest of my accounts and other settings were available when I started Pidgin again. I also ran Firefox and Skype to copied over there respective hidden folders too.
I then followed the directions from “The Perfect Desktop – Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)” submitted by Falko Timme. I picked almost all the same options as Falko, but some I didn’t want or feel a need for a this time. Falko’s directions were easy to follow, and I had my system back up to specs in no time. Ii tested this by watching the Mac ads to verify Quicktime was working with Firefox, watching the local videos with wmv, mov, wma, avi extensions, and I was able to play a DVD with no problems. Of course my mp3’s and other sounds worked, but something was still out of place.
I forgot to add my Desktop Themes from a post I read a few weeks back called “9 Great Gnome Themes with Ubuntu Repositories.” François Vogelweith is the author of the themes and they are great! I really enjoy having them on my PC. Currently I am running Wild Shine.
I also went to OpenOffice.org to download some templates to see if I can get OpenOffice to work better for me so I don’t have to rely on Office 2007.
So now by boot time has decreased from 33 seconds to 21 23 seconds. The best I saw on my PC before I added everything was 19 seconds. I am uploading my bootchart into my Box.net shared files.
I’m glad the re-installation worked as well as it did. I’ve been in the boat of “crap, everything is broke and I can’t recover because the Moon was not aligned with Saturn during the initial backup command”
Drahusz 