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

[David Rosenstrauch]

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