Moving a working system from one computer to another

[doctordruidphd]

What I would like to do:
I have a laptop computer on which I want to install kubuntu. Rather than install it on the laptop, and mess with the laptop endlessly (I hate laptops, it's for someone else), it would be easier if I could set up the system in VirtualBox, and then transfer it to the laptop.
As far as moving the system files, that is relatively easy, using a usb drive.

The problem is:
If I set the system up on VB, the drivers will be installed to work with VB's simulated hardware, which is not the same as on the laptop. Therefore, I can't just move the system (tried it), as the drivers are all wrong.

The question:
Is there a way to reconfigure the kernel and its drivers for the correct hardware once the system has been moved? As far as I know, the only way to set up the hardware is through the install program. Is there some other way?

And no, it's NOT easier to install the base system, and reinstall and reconfigure everything. To reiterate, I HATE LAPTOPS, the less I have to do with it, the better.

[Pillage Idiot]

Re: Moving a working system from one computer to another

If the laptop is a newer model with a SATA drive, you could yank the drive from it and connect it into your desktop, do a normal install from there and then move it back to the laptop. It should recognise everything when it boots and reconfigure itself. I have had success moving installations this way before. All you should need to do once it is moved would be to install the graphics drivers.
Or you could just plug a real keyboard and mouse into it and maybe a monitor too.

[Troberg]

Re: Moving a working system from one computer to another

What I do, which takes about 30 minutes per machine, about 3 minutes of my time, the rest is just computer time, is to:

* Do a fresh install
* Install the same packages as the "master" machine (there are scripts out there that does that for you)
* Copy the entire home dir from the "master" to the "copy"

That's all, works like a charm. I've done it for at least ten machines so far.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Moving a working system from one computer to another

Thanks for the replies so far, but they do not answer the question.

If the laptop is a newer model with a SATA drive, you could yank the drive from it and connect it into your desktop,

The problem there is that the video and audio hardware is different, so the system can't be installed on machine #1 and then work on machine #2 without reconfiguring the drivers.

* Do a fresh install

The idea here is to avoid all the downloading and reconfiguring.

So, to refocus the question -- is there a way to reconfigure an installation on one machine to work with different hardware on another machine? Assume that both are 32-bit, so there is no 64/32 problem. But the video and audio hardware is different, and so are the disk drives for that matter, but as there is an ATA drive on the desktop (the laptop is ATA), the right drivers are probably there.

[Pillage Idiot]

Re: Moving a working system from one computer to another

I just recently did a clean install on a new hard drive in my pc, which has amd chipsets and stuff, and posted it to my father whose mainboard is nvidia based.
It was a fully configured installation, down to virtualbox with an xp vm already set up.
We both have nvidia graphics chips so I installed the proprietary drivers for that.
Dad just swapped the hard drives out and booted, which took a while first time while the system came to terms with the different hardware.
The first boot loaded to a terminal session, but a simple reboot from there and it all came good.
There were no apparent issues, and I expect if there were a simple update would have sorted it out.
Since you have different graphics hardware just don't install any additional drivers and it should work just fine.
I have found over the years that linux is very resilient to major hardware changes.

[Troberg]

Re: Moving a working system from one computer to another

* Do a fresh install

The idea here is to avoid all the downloading and reconfiguring.

Assuming that you've already installed it once, you should have the CD, so now downloading. No reconfiguring needed, you'll get all that when you copy the home directory.

As I said, it takes half an hour, less if you are efficient. A while ago, I cloned four laptops and four desktops from another laptop using this method, and had all eight machines done in about an hour (I had several copies of the CD, though), configuration, software and all.

This is not Windows, you can copy the configuration from one machine to another.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Moving a working system from one computer to another

I have found over the years that linux is very resilient to major hardware changes.

I think one of the major problems I am having is that my system uses an NVIDIA card, whereas the laptop is an embedded ATI. I'm not sure what VB uses for emulation. So what I will try is leaving the video unconfigured, using the VESA driver, and see if that works. One of the problems with it is that the laptop won't boot from USB, which makes it hard to experiment. Will give it a try again and see what happens.


I guess what I am really trying to figure out in all this is how the install program goes about detecting and setting up kernel drivers. So far I have not been able to find any clear documentation on that.