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I am running 14.04 LTS and would like to upgrade to 16.04 LTS with a complete reinstall. One of the motives behind the complete reinstall is that there is a dualboot system with a zombie Windows I want to get rid of. So it is fine for me that the new Ubuntu release takes hold of the hard-disk resources in full once again.

There are two partitions, though, that I would like to keep in place out of convenience: those where I had mounted /home and /opt. Of course I am aware that backup is just as important as clean water, and that I can resort to that after a brute-force reinstall.

However, I wondered if, during a complete reinstall, I could instruct the installation medium of 16.04 not to wipe those specific partitions, so than I can mount them again when the new Ubuntu is in place?

Same question holds in the scenario I move onwards from 16.04 to 18.04.

It is worth mentioning that /home is encrypted, in case this complicates the matter, although this question and answer Why can I not deselect "encrypt my home folder"? gives a hint of what will happen. Confirm/confute welcome.

XavierStuvw
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1 Answers1

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You can re-install using "something else" and not format your partitions. The installer will take note of your applications, erase system directories (not touching your $HOME or /home directory) then install, then add-back additional software you had added to your system if found in Ubuntu repositories, then ask you to reboot. PPA's & 3rd party repos are disabled so software sourced from them won't be re-installed.

I've used this without issue with an encrypted /home partition (also had an issue once with a [possibly beta] 17.10 re-install, but it was a missing file in the installer that once added, all was good). I however didn't use encrypted when I upgraded from 14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS, so my encrypted upgrades were later releases.

This method allows you to 'skip' releases too, or go backwards (ie. from 18.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS if you decide you didn't like 18.04 for some reason..) It's also useful should you just need to re-install the same version you were on; and I've used it many many times. The something else gives you full control over partitioning.

guiverc
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