| Ubuntu Jaunty: Restore Firefox and/or Thunderbird from Backup |
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| Tech Notes - Linux |
| Written by Rick |
| Wednesday, 02 September 2009 12:00 |
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Last weekend I decided it was time for a fresh installation of Ubuntu Linux. Upgrading from version to version sometimes leaves your system a little "off". So, I generally do a fresh installation every second or third release just to keep things neat and to use new or upgraded features. Network Manager comes to mind, it was a little buggy after upgrading. And I had some really weird stuff happening when I'd modify a text document over the internet, like the entire content of the document would be appended to the file upon saving, every save. Rather than spend the time debugging, a new installation was the way to go. Like a "good user" I backed-up all my important and a lot of unimportant stuff to another drive before starting the install. Rsync is a great tool for this jobl! A linux user definetly wants to backup the /home directory. I usually backup /etc, /opt, /usr and /var for good measure too. With this done I proceeded to do the installation from the Live CD. The installation was uneventful and done in less than 30 minutes including coffee breaks. And this is where things always got interesting. Should I restore the hidden directories for Firefox and Thunderbird before or after installing the applications? I've been using Ubuntu long enough now that I've tried both ways. This time I restored the hidden directories before installing the applications. When the application installation was complete I had all my bookmarks in Firefox, all my email accounts in Thunderbird and passwords for both applications intact when I started each application. Yeehaw!! That was too easy. I don't remember this ever working previously, but it's possible that my grey hairs are getting so deep I just don't remember. So this little note will come in handy with my next reinstall, and hopefully help some one else too! |
