One of the biggest and most important steps to a new installation is to restore files. I found that grsync is a great tool that will help. Of course, this also requires a good backup.
This post will go through what I did to restore files from my backup.
Installing/Using grsync
I installed grsync using Ubuntu Software Center:
Once installed, I copied my files from my external drive to my local drive like this:
On the advanced tab, I chose to do a checksum to ensure no mistakes.
To start the process, you simply click on the Gears icon in the top right. Then, it will give you a processing status for the current file and for overall:
Restoring Files
There are several just plain directories of files that I restore (of course, with grsync):
- ~/Documents
- ~/app (my application development stuff: Eclipse workspaces, etc.)
- ~/MIS (work-related stuff)
- ~/Pictures & ~/.shotwell (all of my photos)
Configuration Files
For Google Chrome, I restored my profile by copying this directory from my backup:
- ~/.config/google-chrome
For the passwords in Chrome and passwords in other applications, I restored passwords with this directory:
- ~/.gnome2/keyrings
Skype stores all of the contacts on their servers, so it is probably just as easy to just enter the user account information after a new install for that. The key is if you want history. The history is stored in the .Skype directory on your computer rather than on Skype’s servers. So, I restored that folder.
- ~/.Skype
Remmina configuration:
- ~/.remmina
- ~/.ssh
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