Is there any other way to do a clean install withot formatting /home?

I think my Ubuntu is a bit broken from messing around with it.

Unfortunately during installation, I did not make a separate partition for /home. Now I need to re-install but want to keep my music and films.

Any ideas...

Solution 1:

Ubuntu has always supported this, but it's hard to kill the myth that you need a separate partition in order to preserve your data. Stick the CD in and just reinstall over it:

The Ubuntu installers for both the desktop CD and server/alternate CD have the ability to install over an existing system, preserving your home directory (and the local system driectories: /usr/local, /usr/src, and /var/local). This functionality also reuses the user ID and group ID of an existing user, if it has the same username as the user you're creating during installation.

To use this option when installing, choose the option for advanced partitioning, then select your existing / or /home partition. In the box that appears, make sure the filesystem selected matches the existing filesystem of that partition, and that the format box is not checked. Proceed as normal through the rest of the options.

References:

• What's your recommendation on drive partitioning schemes for a desktop and home server?
• http://www.jorgecastro.org/2010/09/09/no-need-to-complicate-your-life