[arch-general] new pc; keep arch installation?
Hi, I'm going to get a new pc, replacing my now more than 5 years old pc. I would like to keep my current arch installation, and hope to prevent the need to do a full reinstall. I like the software I have, and I like the configuration I have... Could I just put my old harddisk (which is relatively new and still OK, I have SMART enabled) in the new pc and reboot? Both are amd 64 bit cpu's, the old one one of the first athlon 64's, the new one a Phenom II X6 1035T (and my current arch linux install is 64bit) Of course stuff like chipset, network chip, video etc. are all different. For video that would be no problem, I could install other (current = nvidia, new pc = ati) drivers from the text console. However, I'd like basic stuff and network to work :-) Could anyone give me an idea about the chance of luck for such an operation? Tips, hints? Or would you just advise a clean install and install and reconfigure all software again? Regards, Vincent Schut.
On Tue, 2010-05-25 at 15:46 +0200, Vincent Schut wrote:
Hi,
I'm going to get a new pc, replacing my now more than 5 years old pc. I would like to keep my current arch installation, and hope to prevent the need to do a full reinstall. I like the software I have, and I like the configuration I have...
Could I just put my old harddisk (which is relatively new and still OK, I have SMART enabled) in the new pc and reboot?
Both are amd 64 bit cpu's, the old one one of the first athlon 64's, the new one a Phenom II X6 1035T (and my current arch linux install is 64bit)
Of course stuff like chipset, network chip, video etc. are all different. For video that would be no problem, I could install other (current = nvidia, new pc = ati) drivers from the text console. However, I'd like basic stuff and network to work :-)
Could anyone give me an idea about the chance of luck for such an operation? Tips, hints? Or would you just advise a clean install and install and reconfigure all software again?
Linux is not Windows, so you'll get away with it. You could put the harddisk in your new system and boot the new system with the fallback kernel option which includes an initramfs image with all drivers. You'll probably have to reconfigure X then. After booting the fallback kernel, it's advised to regenerate your initramfs images using mkinitcpio, or by just reinstalling kernel26. My Archlinux installation survived multiple mainboards and harddisks, it's years old by now.
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 7:28 PM, Jan de Groot
On Tue, 2010-05-25 at 15:46 +0200, Vincent Schut wrote:
Hi,
I'm going to get a new pc, replacing my now more than 5 years old pc. I would like to keep my current arch installation, and hope to prevent the need to do a full reinstall. I like the software I have, and I like the configuration I have...
Could I just put my old harddisk (which is relatively new and still OK, I have SMART enabled) in the new pc and reboot?
Both are amd 64 bit cpu's, the old one one of the first athlon 64's, the new one a Phenom II X6 1035T (and my current arch linux install is 64bit)
Of course stuff like chipset, network chip, video etc. are all different. For video that would be no problem, I could install other (current = nvidia, new pc = ati) drivers from the text console. However, I'd like basic stuff and network to work :-)
Could anyone give me an idea about the chance of luck for such an operation? Tips, hints? Or would you just advise a clean install and install and reconfigure all software again?
Linux is not Windows, so you'll get away with it. You could put the harddisk in your new system and boot the new system with the fallback kernel option which includes an initramfs image with all drivers. You'll probably have to reconfigure X then. After booting the fallback kernel, it's advised to regenerate your initramfs images using mkinitcpio, or by just reinstalling kernel26.
My Archlinux installation survived multiple mainboards and harddisks, it's years old by now.
+1 Linux Kernel determines which drivers to use at boot. Unlike Windows which uses just the specified driver. -- Nilesh Govindarajan Facebook: nilesh.gr Twitter: nileshgr Website: www.itech7.com
On 25/05/10 16:58, Jan de Groot wrote:
Linux is not Windows, so you'll get away with it. You could put the harddisk in your new system and boot the new system with the fallback kernel option which includes an initramfs image with all drivers. You'll probably have to reconfigure X then. After booting the fallback kernel, it's advised to regenerate your initramfs images using mkinitcpio, or by just reinstalling kernel26.
My Archlinux installation survived multiple mainboards and harddisks, it's years old by now.
This. Boot the fallback kernel and adjust stuff (/etc/rc.conf, Xorg's settings, etc) as necessary. I did the same last month when I changed the motherboard, processor and RAM in my system and went from an Intel rig to AMD. Then I only had to replace the acpi-cpufreq entry in the MODULES array in /etc/rc.conf with powernow-k8 to get frequency scaling to work with the new processor and install the driver for the ATi Radeon integrated graphics (which replaced an NVIDIA card). Should be easy and straightforward. :)
Hello,
When I reinstall Arch Linux --- or any other Linux at all --- I often keep
the configuration files in my home directory. I mean, for example, you can
preserve the directory ~/.purple thus keeping your Pidgin configuration.
So, what I suggest is that you do a clean installation and just copy those
directories from your old PC to your new one.
2010/5/25 Vincent Schut
Hi,
I'm going to get a new pc, replacing my now more than 5 years old pc. I would like to keep my current arch installation, and hope to prevent the need to do a full reinstall. I like the software I have, and I like the configuration I have...
Could I just put my old harddisk (which is relatively new and still OK, I have SMART enabled) in the new pc and reboot?
Both are amd 64 bit cpu's, the old one one of the first athlon 64's, the new one a Phenom II X6 1035T (and my current arch linux install is 64bit)
Of course stuff like chipset, network chip, video etc. are all different. For video that would be no problem, I could install other (current = nvidia, new pc = ati) drivers from the text console. However, I'd like basic stuff and network to work :-)
Could anyone give me an idea about the chance of luck for such an operation? Tips, hints? Or would you just advise a clean install and install and reconfigure all software again?
Regards, Vincent Schut.
-- Rafael Beraldo http://cabaladada.org
El 25/05/10 15:46, Vincent Schut escribió:
Hi,
I'm going to get a new pc, replacing my now more than 5 years old pc. I would like to keep my current arch installation, and hope to prevent the need to do a full reinstall. I like the software I have, and I like the configuration I have...
Could I just put my old harddisk (which is relatively new and still OK, I have SMART enabled) in the new pc and reboot?
Both are amd 64 bit cpu's, the old one one of the first athlon 64's, the new one a Phenom II X6 1035T (and my current arch linux install is 64bit)
Of course stuff like chipset, network chip, video etc. are all different. For video that would be no problem, I could install other (current = nvidia, new pc = ati) drivers from the text console. However, I'd like basic stuff and network to work :-)
Could anyone give me an idea about the chance of luck for such an operation? Tips, hints? Or would you just advise a clean install and install and reconfigure all software again?
Regards, Vincent Schut.
Yes you can. Connect the hd but boot with a livecd (like Archiso), then mount proc, sys and dev and make a chroot on your partition (for example into /mnt/hd), something like this: mkdir /mnt/hd cd /mnt/hd mount -t proc proc proc/ mount -t sysfs sys sys/ mount -o bind /dev dev/ chroot /mnt/hd Then reinstall kernel26 package or regenerate mkinitcpio image ;) Make sure in /etc/rc.conf have the correct modules and in /etc/fstab all entries are correct. Regards $(Figue)
What nice ideas to prevent new installations...! I didn't know that it was
that easy to transfer a installation among different hardware.
2010/5/25 Figue
El 25/05/10 15:46, Vincent Schut escribió:
Hi,
I'm going to get a new pc, replacing my now more than 5 years old pc. I would like to keep my current arch installation, and hope to prevent the need to do a full reinstall. I like the software I have, and I like the configuration I have...
Could I just put my old harddisk (which is relatively new and still OK, I have SMART enabled) in the new pc and reboot?
Both are amd 64 bit cpu's, the old one one of the first athlon 64's, the new one a Phenom II X6 1035T (and my current arch linux install is 64bit)
Of course stuff like chipset, network chip, video etc. are all different. For video that would be no problem, I could install other (current = nvidia, new pc = ati) drivers from the text console. However, I'd like basic stuff and network to work :-)
Could anyone give me an idea about the chance of luck for such an operation? Tips, hints? Or would you just advise a clean install and install and reconfigure all software again?
Regards, Vincent Schut.
Yes you can.
Connect the hd but boot with a livecd (like Archiso), then mount proc, sys and dev and make a chroot on your partition (for example into /mnt/hd), something like this:
mkdir /mnt/hd cd /mnt/hd mount -t proc proc proc/ mount -t sysfs sys sys/ mount -o bind /dev dev/ chroot /mnt/hd
Then reinstall kernel26 package or regenerate mkinitcpio image ;)
Make sure in /etc/rc.conf have the correct modules and in /etc/fstab all entries are correct.
Regards
$(Figue)
-- Rafael Beraldo http://cabaladada.org
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 11:13:00AM -0300, Rafael Beraldo wrote:
What nice ideas to prevent new installations...! I didn't know that it was that easy to transfer a installation among different hardware.
It's one of the many reasons I love Linux. I do a bit of distro hopping. I'm running OpenSuSE this week. Well, I've been running it for a while now. When I went to switch to it I had all my drive space lumped together under an LVM root partition. OpenSuSE's installer wasn't flexible enough to let me install to my existing LVM root partition without reformatting it. Or, maybe I just couldn't figure out how to get the installer to do what I wanted to do. Anyway, installed OpenSuSE under Virtualbox, tar'd up the installation, booted with a Gentoo CD, mounted my root LVM partition, moved my old distro, Slackware, out of the way, and untar'd the OpenSuSE install. With a few minor configuration tweaks and a Grub install I was up and running. Those drives have since been transplanted into a "new" used PC. I've been thinking of Arch recently and at the moment have a "chroot install" in progress. To make things more interesting I didn't want to install pacman directly on my OpenSuSE box so I created a Gentoo chroot environment, installed pacman via the ebuild in Gentoo's portage, and am using that to create an Arch chroot environment. Try that with Windoze. :-) -- Kevin http://www.RawFedDogs.net http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org Bruceville, TX What's the definition of a legacy system? One that works! Errare humanum est, ignoscere caninum.
I'm going to get a new pc, replacing my now more than 5 years old pc. I would like to keep my current arch installation, and hope to prevent the need to do a full reinstall. I like the software I have, and I like the configuration I have...
Could I just put my old harddisk (which is relatively new and still OK, I have SMART enabled) in the new pc and reboot?
When I broke my X60s LCD I took out hte hdd and put it in a USB-HDD box and booted it on a Asus EEEpc. Worked just fine. Some notes about what's needed: - an initramfs with usb (ehci, uhci) and usb-storage drivers - grub2 and fstab setup to look for filesystems by UUID - the Lan and Wifi would get new interface names (because of udev persistent naming) - it doesn't matter if you use NM or wicd - I didn't have a xorg config file, so X did find everything automatically (you'd need to have the x drivers installed though) The LCD was replaced since :) -- damjan
On 05/25/2010 09:46 AM, Vincent Schut wrote:
Hi,
I'm going to get a new pc, replacing my now more than 5 years old pc. I would like to keep my current arch installation, and hope to prevent the need to do a full reinstall. I like the software I have, and I like the configuration I have...
Could I just put my old harddisk (which is relatively new and still OK, I have SMART enabled) in the new pc and reboot?
I've done this. The answer is yes and no. When I tried the old HD in the new machine, the machine did started to boot, then got some sort of boot error and stopped. Reason was that the ramdisk image that was created was tailored to the hardware and modules required by the old machine, and so didn't work correctly with the hardware on the new machine. Solution is as follows: * First time you boot on the new machine, make sure you boot using the fallback kernel image. That ram image should contain *all* modules, not just the ones for the old machine's hardware. * After you successfully boot onto the fallback kernel image, you need to rebuild a new kernel image that matches the new hardware: sudo /sbin/mkinitcpio -p kernel26 * Now reboot the box. It should be able to boot successfully off the new ramdisk image you just generated. HTH, DR
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 9:46 AM, Vincent Schut
Could anyone give me an idea about the chance of luck for such an operation? Tips, hints? Or would you just advise a clean install and install and reconfigure all software again?
I would advise disabling anything that starts X automatically (such as gdm and kdm) until you've tested. If the video is in any way shape or form buggy you don't want to be booting to a locked up system. -- Caleb Cushing http://xenoterracide.blogspot.com
participants (10)
-
Caleb Cushing
-
Damjan Georgievski
-
David Rosenstrauch
-
Evangelos Foutras
-
Figue
-
Jan de Groot
-
Kevin Monceaux
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Nilesh Govindarajan
-
Rafael Beraldo
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Vincent Schut