[ale] Help with data recovery

[DJ-Pfulio]

There are 1,000 different solutions.

On 8/25/20 10:39 AM, Jim Ransone via Ale wrote:

<snip>

> Now I am on to the next can of worms. I was using Ubuntu Studio for
> the pre-installed audio, video, and graphiç design software. It runs
> the Xfce desktop environment. Apparently, they are moving to KDE
> Plasma on the next LTS because it's better in some ways and the
> resource use is now comparably low to Xfce. Apparently most of Ubuntu
> Studio's development team has gone to installing Kubuntu on their own
> computers and adding all the extra Ubuntu Studio stuff on top of
> Kubuntu with an installer designed for that purpose.

I find that very hard to believe. The way that KDE makes more sense is only if you use nearly all Qt-based apps or if you have 16G+ of RAM.  KDE is for people who like to control settings, but still want a GUI.  I like to control settings, but happily edit my ~/.fvwm/ config files for TOTAL CONTROL! ;)

> So I have decided to go that route myself. Now I am trying to figure
> out the best way to get Kubuntu with the Ubuntu Studio stuff and my
> old home folder with all the config files back on my laptop. Anyone
> have any thoughts on the best strategy for this? I have seen someone
> online suggest that the best way is to get the home directory on a
> separate partition FIRST and then installing the new OS in a
> different partition after that. This makes sense to me. Apparently
> there are numerous posts that explain how to do the partition thing.

I wouldn't split the HOME directory off.  That makes the most sense for people without backups. You have backups, so there really isn't any point.

While you do the disk resizing and moving around, I'd setup the installer following my normal disk layout and use LVM+ext4, but lots of people choose not to use LVM to avoid the extra complexities.  LVM is one of those things that you don't know you need it, until it is too late.  ZFS isn't read for the OS storage yet and BTRFS brings just as many complexities as either ZFS or LVM, but without all the online articles to clearly get you through issues.
I would ignore most of the storage on the system and only allocate about 30G to the OS and 4.1G for swap.  The rest would be in the PV and VG, just not allocated to any LVs.

If your file system is already using LVM, much of these things are easier. If you want to move to a new HDD/SSD, you can do that on a live system too.  LVM provides .... options.

> Also, there is the issue that led me to reinstall the OS in the first
> place: I had messed up my audio configuration and couldn't figure out
> how to get sound back. So somehow I need to get all my email,
> browser, calendar settings and cache back but not my audio settings,
> which I had totally screwed up somehow.

Use the 'tree -d' command to see all the directories below your $HOME.  There are probably hundreds. There is a pretty clear layout that your brain will quickly understand, but you have to look.  GUIs are fine for moving around, but they don't give the overview that 'tree -d' does.

> Again, any advice is appreciated! And thanks to everyone for all the
> help with my data recovery!!

Questions like this usually require some back and forth. You might find existing answers and ongoing help over in the ubuntuforums.  Plus, there are enough slight differences where highly skilled non-Ubuntu people may provide less-than-great advice outside an Ubuntu-specific group.

So - first thing is to show your current disk layout, but without all the crap. Also, it should be clearly stated whether you boot with legacy BIOS or UEFI and if there is any dual-triple booting:
$ df -hT -x squashfs -x tmpfs -x devtmpfs
$ lsblk -e 7 -o name,size,type,fstype,mountpoint
$ inxi -Dz
Should be sufficient, though a
$ sudo fdisk -l
could be helpful too, provided all the extra crap is removed. Only read HDDs/SSDs should be shown, not virtual crap or loops.  Also, when posting in forums, please use the method they have to post code.  On the ubuntu forums, that is commonly called 'code tags'.

If you aren't comfortable editing the fstab, posting the current fstab and lsblk output would be helpful too. Always use sudoedit to edit system config files.