Advice for moving Kubuntu HD to another computer?

[donh3]

I want to move my HD to another machine with considerably different hardware. Do I need to re-run the setup command for Kubuntu or will the HAL adjust everything? Are there any useful commands to setup the underpinnings of Kubuntu?

thanks,
don h.

[aysiu]

Re: Advice for moving Kubutu HD to another computer?

From what I've read (I don't have any experience with this), your new hardware will be autodetected.

For moving, I'd recommend using PartImage:
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/partimage

[donh3]

Re: Advice for moving Kubuntu HD to another computer?

partimage is great, i use it all the time. but in this case i like the HD setup and just wanted to drop it in another computer. imaged a kubuntu install from my laptop to a desktop and the results were ok but there were a few small quirks such as calling my DVD-ROM a CD-ROM and not noticing my DVD burner. i would like to avoid quirks like this and learn something new that i can use for other people's machines as well.

[askrieger]

Re: Advice for moving Kubuntu HD to another computer?

I have absolutely no experience doing what you're trying to do, so take this comment with a very big grain of salt. I would guess that you can expect to see exactly the same type of "quirks" that you saw when you imaged your laptop on a desktop with different hardware. Among the things that you imaged were ALL the configuration files (like /etc/fstab) that define the hardware on your system for the OS. Accordingly, I would also expect problems with video, sound, internet interfaces and anything else that's differs from the first system to the second. Accordingly, I would think that you're going to have to set up the new computer almost as if it were a fresh install.

Perhaps, I don't understand what you're doing. Why would you expect the different hardware of your new system to be represented in configuration files generated for the old system? (That's a real question, not a rhetorical ploy.)

[donh3]

Re: Advice for moving Kubuntu HD to another computer?

well i got the HD moved into the other computer. the video came up with the correct voodoo driver. needed a little tweaking to get the resolution higher. the networking had to be reconfigured to startup and get dhcp. otherwise, everything came up really nice. all of the configuration could be done from the System Settings control panel. no command line needed. pretty sweet.

[askrieger]

Re: Advice for moving Kubuntu HD to another computer?

Just a few questions:

the video came up with the correct voodoo driver

Did you have an ATI card on the previous computer and, if so, which driver were you using?

the networking had to be reconfigured to startup and get dhcp

Is that different from the way the old computer contacted the net?
Do you have any optical drives on the new machine, and if so, were they recognized when you booted up?

[donh3]

Re: Advice for moving Kubuntu HD to another computer?

I've had several video cards. I moved the HD to another machine and it was OK also. So here is the moves I've made.

1.6 GHz Duron, Via chipset, with SIS built in video, IDE hard drive, Via ethernet
PII-233 440LX chipset, Voodoo3 PCI card, Linksys ethernet PCI card
Celeron 700 Intel 810 chipset with builtin video and ethernet.

The only change I had a minor problem with is the PII as I explained below. I have not had any problems with the optical drive because they all are CD-ROMS.

[javierrivera]

Re: Advice for moving Kubuntu HD to another computer?

Perhaps, I don't understand what you're doing. Why would you expect the different hardware of your new system to be represented in configuration files generated for the old system? (That's a real question, not a rhetorical ploy.)

AFAIK there are usually only two files with hardware info.

- fstab, where you define device drivers. But when you move a entire hardisk, it will remain mostly the same.
- xorg.conf. Video driver definition. The main source for problems.

Everything else is usually detected, and the correct module is loaded at startup. So you usually can get with this just swapping the hardsidk and dkpg-reconfigure xserver-xorg.

If you have done something special to your setup (like blacklisting some modules), or you use ndiswrapper, you will have to change it.

I have done it four or five times, always on servers, to get a broken server up fast. I did it with a couple of linux "flavours" and it usually have worked very nice. Of course, begin servers, I don't mind about video drivers or xorg.

Javier.