I recently upgraded my laptop, and I'm changing Linux distros at the same time. I'm curious about both the practical and philosophical aspects of such migrations. For example:<p>- Do you re-flash the BIOS before migrating? Is there a good database of which BIOS versions are vulnerable to LogoFail?<p>- Do you restore from your backup? Or, is it more reliable to plug your old drive in and copy the data over manually? Are there any tricks for lessening the chances of silently losing or corrupting data in the process?<p>- Do you copy over your whole browser profile, or just import the things you care about (bookmarks, passwords, about:config settings) to get rid of accumulated cruft?<p>- Do you have a script in your dotfiles to install and configure all your apps, or do you do it manually?<p>- Do you comb through the parts of your system that aren’t backed up (if any), to make sure nothing worth keeping ended up there by accident? If so, how?<p>- Long shot: has anyone successfully mounted a running Linux machine as a drive over USB, ala Mac's “target disc mode”?<p>- How long do you keep the data on your old drive?<p>- How long does the whole process usually take you?<p>Thanks!
As far as backups go, I prefer the fire-and-forget method where you just image the entire drive and dig into it when you actually need something. Using separate drives for root and home makes it easier. Backup to backblaze to fulfill 3-2-1. Storage is just so cheap it's not worth the effort to try to get it efficient. I also find its not worth the effort to migrate bookmarks and stuff (I just rarely revisit them) and use a NAS for the bigger stuff like pirated media. 1password and Firefox sync take care of everything else.<p>I usually restore dot files and other home directory stuff from Git using the procedure described in this HN thread: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11071754">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11071754</a><p>Dev environments are predominantly implemented using nix, flakes, and direnv on a per project basis so there's no migration there.<p>I've got a few scripts that dump a list of major packages installed on my ArchLinux system so I can reinstall them in bulk instead of chasing them down one by one afterwards. Another script to go through the file system and delete all the rust target folders, node's node_modules, etc. and a list of caches (yarn, docker, etc.)<p>I keep the data forever as a hoarder since drives are so cheap but I very rarely have to look through them.<p>Never even heard of LogoFail. I guess their exploit name wasn't catchy enough to grab my attention
I started partitioning my drive based on the data's relative importance+backup needs:<p>- 200GB OS (Optional backup; no user files)<p>- 400GB Data (Manual backup: desktop, users (home), documents, downloads, etc)<p>- 400GB Sync (Synced to cloud: Insync, Dropbox, github repos, mailstore/gyb email backups, etc)<p>- 800GB Ephemeral (No backup; large temporary/recoverable files: Google file stream, scoop.sh, pnpm store, steam games, etc)<p>It's probably easier on linux (package managers), but most of my daily programs can be installed via a single scoop.sh command.<p>- Scoop is mostly on the "Ephemeral" partition, but has a "persist" folder that points to the "Data" partition<p>- I favor the home directory of git-bash for windows (vs Windows profile home), which is synced via DropBox<p>- Most of my git repos are also synced to dropbox. However I use insync to sync them so I can omit the massive, numerous node_modules folders.<p>- It takes a little configuration to ensure folders like desktop;home that would normally exist on the OS partition are on the Data partition or Ephemeral partition as needed.
Years ago I started treating my local workstation as ephemeral. Anything that needed persistence I pushed elsewhere. Generally speaking:<p>* Documents go in Google Drive<p>* Photos go in Google Photos<p>* Code goes to Github<p>* App settings sync via however that app syncs.<p>This turned my workstation into basically a combination of:<p>* My dotfiles (which I used to sync with <a href="https://github.com/ingydotnet/">https://github.com/ingydotnet/</a>... and now sync with <a href="https://github.com/akerl/smoosh">https://github.com/akerl/smoosh</a> )<p>* A quick trip through the preferences pane<p>* Installing a handful of apps.<p>At the height of this, I was working to use Puppet to configure my Mac, and once a week or so I'd throw it into recovery mode, do a full wipe / reinstall, and run puppet, to test the state of my bootstrapping. These days I don't bother: none of my local settings are that complex.
I always do a manual migration, going thought the files and folders, and setting files, I want to move over. I find it nice to start with a clean slate. If there is old junk from old programs I don’t use anymore, I don’t want them making their way to the new system.<p>I’m pretty selective and don’t do much “just incase” migrating. If I don’t know what it is, it’s not getting moved.<p>I can usually do it in an afternoon, but will sometimes take a week or so, just to make sure I didn’t forget anything. I’ll usually start making a list a while in advance, so it’s in my mind and I can add things as I think of them over the course of a few weeks.
Use rsync over the network to copy stuff across from the old machine to the new machine if you are just using the main internal drives. Alternatively you can move stuff over with 'sneaker net' - USB drives.<p>If you have the capability of using extra drives on both machines, you can move the extra drive from the old machine to the new machine, holus bolus. Disconnect from one, reconnect to the other and you magically have 4TB of files moved over.<p>Plan your directory layout to minimise stuff being all over the place. Why have archive stuff (the 'write once, keep forever' stuff like music, photos, videos, source-code, etc, etc in your /home directory? That directory is for purely personal stuff and/or stuff that's a 'work in progress'.) I dedicate a whole partition or drive to that archive stuff. It never needs to be changed. If it's on a separate hard-drive or NVME SSD you can physically shift it from one machine to the next.<p><i>Do you have a script in your dotfiles to install and configure all your apps</i><p>Yes. That script copies across, whenever possible, the /etc directories that contain the relevant config files immediately after a new distro version is installed. Then when you actually install the app packages, the package-manager will use those 'old' config files.<p>I have some scripts that allow a complete rebuild from scratch, including the root re-installation, in around 2 hours total. (If you look ahead and keep a list of all the installed packages plus a copy of the /etc config files every day, You can install the distro from scratch, re-install the list of packages and rebuild that new installation to where you were last night with the old installation very easily.)
I put all my files on a /data partition, including home. Very easy to back up to external disk.<p>Last time I bought a Thunderbolt4 cable, plugged them in directly and rsync copied everything in minutes. Rsync does block checksums; run it twice. Important files are in git, which can help. ext4 has metadata checksums as well.<p>I kept original files for a another week, but have external drive backup and old photos on bluray too.