[arch-general] new pc; keep arch installation?

[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.