How to preserve users in new install?

[Jonathan Rawle]

Joe(theWordy)Philbrook wrote:

> I'm less than expert here ;) but wouldn't it suffice to make archival
> copies of /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, (maybe /etc/group) and /home, and
> when you copy them to the newly installed system, just take care to
> *NOT* copy any of the /home/*/.[a-zA-Z0-9]* files??? You would still
> have the archival copy for reference when editing the new ones...
> And for multiple user accounts where the users do some of their own
> configuring, you could copy them, then rename them to .OLD${dotfile}
> so that the users would still have access to them as a reference in
> getting back half remembered configurations.
> 

That would be one way of doing it, but I always want to retain my user
settings as they slowly evolve over time and would take a very long time to
get back.

I use KDE, and keep most of my settings. This works fine on the whole, but
there are always a few things (such as custom menu entries in FC2) that
have to be deleted to make the new installation function correctly.

Jonathan