#HowTo #ByJuho – How to install clean GNU/Linukka aka. GNU/Linux onto bigger laptop 2.5″ HDD and all your apt-get’table applications and document and configuration files from an older smaller disk to bigger?
#needsudo not gonna work without sudo rights
#need $20 USB-to-SATA casing and a screwdriver
#alternative similar effect producing method is to use the casing and use dd to move partitions around and Gparted to resize them.
# what it doesn’t do? It doesn’t move password file so this will no work for a system then one user. It does not move /root-directory contents in case there is something there and it does not move any server software set-up except for the apt-gettable software.
# Run in the old GNU/Linukka to get complete list of # ‘apt-get install’ed packages onto packages.list
‘dpkg –get-selections > packages.list’
# Move this packages.list file (no need to compress it. it is few tens of kilobytes long) to the
# Now you could try
‘sudo dpkg –set-selections < packages.list’
straight ahead but for me it complained about not finding obviously existing packages such as ‘apache2’ so I consulted the dpkg man page
# So first run
‘ sudo apt-get install dselect’
# and run
‘sudo dselect update’
# and you will get the latest fullest catalogue of apt-gettable software from the repositories
# Now you are ready to set dpkg (Debian PacKaGe management) selections from the file
‘sudo dpkg –set-selections < packages.list’
# now install all packages that were set in the previous command from packages.list. This is obviously going to take a some time but you’re almost there.
‘sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade’
# You can now use your favourite method of recovering your files stored in /home are restored
#I didn’t just mount the old /home partition. Instead I put it into a USB-to-SATA casing and used that to connect the HDD into the freshly installed system and copied them over.
# Alternatives are using a 3rd (removable) HDD to move the files or upload to server or cloud and download to new system.
# recursively copying all directories from the old /home partition
‘sudo cp /media/username/UUIDgoeshere /home -R’