Transfer home directory?

[Paul Dickson]

On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 21:13:03 -0700 (MST), der.hans wrote:

> Am 16. Sep, 2006 schwätzte Alan Dayley so:
> 
> > Suppose you buy a new computer and want to transfer your /home/user
> > directory from your old computer to the new one.  In this case both
> > computers are running the same distro so that is not an issue.
> >
> > Is there anything different to doing this beyond the usual file transfer
> > methods?  In other words, is there anything among the settings, etc. in a
> > user's home directory that would break when used on different hardware?
> 
> Make sure user and group IDs match or are changed.
> 
> Check for crontabs and stuff in local mail directories.
> 
> Did you do anything in /usr/local/ or in /opt/?
> 
> Use tar to copy the files and you'll keep timestamps on both the files and
> directories. unison, rsync, cpio and others generally don't have a way to
> maintain directory timestamps.
> 
> Use --atime-preserve when untarring to keep the dir timestamps.
> 
> You can tar across the network.
> 
> Here are a few key lines out of a script I no longer use.
> 
> TARC="tar clvf - -C"
> TARX="tar x --atime-preserve -pvf -"
> 
> ssh $HOST "/usr/bin/sudo $TARC ${fs} . 2>${RLOG}" | sudo $TARX >${LLOG} 2>${LLOG}.err
> 
> You can also just dd the partition onto the new disk :).

Or you can use rsync:  rsync --dry-run -a -v /home/user/ user at host:/home/user/
Ssh can be used as the the transport mechanism ("--rsh=ssh").

Remove the --dry-run and -v when you feel it's doing the right thing.

	-Paul