Export all cinnamon settings in one file?

[kindlychung]

I am wondering whether it is possible to export all cinnamon settings in one file, which I can import into another cinnamon installation? This would be a great convenience.

[Hoser Rob]

It's not that simple. There are protected level system settings and user settings, basically. It's not so easy to migrate the lower level root settings and you wouldn't generally want to anyway. On a different machine they'd mostly be different.

User level settings are hidden files in your /home directory. You can migrate those to a large extent ... if it's for the same target distro version and DE it's fairly simple. I just did it but on a Kubuntu to mint changeover. You can copy all the hidden settings files onto a backup drive. So most all of my user apps have the same settings.

But it isn't just one file, and you can't assume you can just copy all them over.

[kindlychung]

That would still be nice, what are these dot files then? Thanks!

[BlackVeils]

seems to just be the .cinnamon folder immediately in your user folder, but I'm not convinced cinnamon settings carry over much by using this.

basically when I backup nearly all program settings, this is generally what I don't backup:

/username/.adobe
/username/.cache
/username/.clamtk
/username/.gvfs
/username/.config/SpiderOak
/username/.dbus
/username/.dropbox
/username/.dropbox-dist
/username/.dvdcss
/username/.ecryptfs
/username/.gnome2_private
/username/.gstreamer-0.10
/username/.java
/username/.local
-- (you may want to keep /username/.local/share/applications if you manually edit menu items here)
/username/.macromedia
/username/.pki
/username/.Private
/username/.themes
-- (but you may want to keep a storage of the xfwm4 theme folders, which are inside the folders with theme names, if you use the xfce desktop)
/username/.thumbnails
/username/VirtualBox VMs
-- (you may actually need to keep your virtual machines!)
/username/.bash_history
/username/.bash_logout
/username/.dmrc
/username/.gksu.lock
/username/.ICEauthority
/username/.profile
/surname/.Xauthority
/username/.xsession-errors

you need to backup to a Linux formated disk, like ext4 instead of fat32 or NTFS, or .tar the lot, but I always gave problems trying to do that.

[kindlychung]

Really, you don't back up your ~/.profile? Why?

[BlackVeils]

Really, you don't back up your ~/.profile? Why?

ha, I really don't have a need for it. I do scripts but I have not edited that file.

[kindlychung]

You didn't really answer the question: what dot files to copy. I understand some of these filenames might be private and not to be shared, but could you please post these that are not? Thanks!

[BlackVeils]

well I did, I said /username/.cinnamon folder, but its not necessarily that good, I have not been with cinnamon long enough though to know. I was recommending you backup all settings, and exclude those which I listed unless you know you want something from there. just pick and choose what you want.

things to backup are either directly in the username folder or in /username/.config

[kindlychung]

Oh, sorry, my attention just jumped to the long list. Thanks!

[Hoser Rob]

You didn't really answer the question: what dot files to copy...

That may be because there isn't an "one size fits all" answer. Depends on your particular install.

The main thing is: before copying the old config file to the new install, rename the config file on the new install to ".<whatever>BAK".

You seem to be under the misconception that there's a simple way to do this. There isn't really.

if you are unwilling/unable to find out what's what you may be better off just doing the new install from scratch.