Reinstall debian stable

[mzmk]

I have been using the stable distribution with good reliability and then for some puposes added some packages from unstable. it had terrible impact: first apt get showed many dependency problems for each new installation, ... when I tried to resove the troubles I ended up with gnome no longer working and unble to install it nor kde. I only use the console now and unable to install new components.

I tried to downgrade to stable but the issue seems pretty complicate and tedious. I have tried this.

The issue I am considering now is to reinstall debian (3.1). Is this operation feasible (as in windows) ? is it safe for /home (at least the working files, not preferences)?

Please help

[ehawk]

I have been using the stable distribution with good reliability and then for some puposes added some packages from unstable. it had terrible impact: first apt get showed many dependency problems for each new installation, ... when I tried to resove the troubles I ended up with gnome no longer working and unble to install it nor kde. I only use the console now and unable to install new components.

I tried to downgrade to stable but the issue seems pretty complicate and tedious. I have tried this.

The issue I am considering now is to reinstall debian (3.1). Is this operation feasible (as in windows) ? is it safe for /home (at least the working files, not preferences)?

Please help

If you have a /home on a separate partition, it should be okay. I don't know if the installer will recognize and respect a pre-existing /home if it is on the same partition as /. You can always see by trying. If it's not recognized, you can abort the installation before the partition changes are written to disk.

[mzmk]

Thank you.

My /home is not on another partition.

Can I send it to another partition? (this sounds secure).

[ehawk]

You could use something like parted to non-destructively resize and create a new partion to copy /home into it. But you may not need to do this. As I noted before, the installer may recognize a /home directory and offer you the option of keeping it (I don't recall if it does), but you can try with no risk, as you are asked if you really want to write changes to the partition table before it does anything to your hard drive. This occurs after it searches for pre-existing directories and after you have indicated your plan on how to partition the hard drive, so when it asks you "are you sure you want to make these partiions" on the hard drive, if the proposed divisions don't include your detected /home directory, you can simply abort the installation with no harm done.

If you want to non-destructively resize partitions and create new ones, google for the "parted" (partition editor) application (should be able to search for it on the main GNU webpage). Then you should be able to mount both partitions and copy your /home to a new partition.

Another thing you can do is copy your current /home directory to a zip disk, CD, DVD, or usb flash memory keychain device (very inexpensive). You can use the tar and gzip commands to compress the directory, if needed. If you have access to another linux account on another computer, you can move /home back and forth using secure copy, scp, or sftp.

I haven't done this and don't remember how Debian behaves, so if someone else can help out, please jump in.