Attempted clean install Beta 5 - but emails still there

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1

I have just upgraded my nightly installation (last updated around August) to Beta 5. I had used this to experiment with Haiku - without fully committing - in the run-up to B5 so I could make a clean install when the time came, and that is what I did.

I burnt a USB stick and booted the machine. It came up with the option to install or try out so I pointed the installer at the existing Haiku partition, clicked past the warning that it was being installed over an existing Haiku partition, and clicked install.

After rebooting I am on a desktop purporting to be B5 and my previously installed programmes are gone. But something strange: the email folder is still there with my emails in it! And it merily continues to sync with the imap server.

I am wondering if I did a clean install or something halfway, and how I still have personal info still on the system. I am not certain whether, when booting the computer with the USB stick, it booted into that or just the installed system. And after the message to restart following installation the computer hung - maybe because I pulled out the USB stick immediately upon clicking “reboot”.

I’m obviously happy with not having to download all my emails again, but have I got a totally factory spec installation of B5? Should I try writing B5 over the partition again or just proceed as I am. And what do you think I managed to do?

2

If you want a clean install without anything left from your previous install,you have to delete your old partition first and then recreate it.
Installing over an existing Haiku installation replaces your system files with the new ones and doesn’t touch any of your data.
If we were talking about any other OS,I’d say this is extremely messy as it can leave back many unused files if they don’t have a replacement with exactly the same name in the new system.
But thanks to Haikus innovative package management system,I think installing over an existing install is relatively clean here,as the system is made of a few package files rather than thousands of small individual files.
The cleaner solution would have been simply updating your old system to Beta5 instead of installing over it,as the package manager would have cleaned up packages that aren’t needed any longer.

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