How to transfer whole linux box

[Rick Stevens]

On Mon, 2007-07-09 at 15:10 +0530, Alok Pandey wrote:
> Hi Troubleshooters,
> I am almost confuse to how to make start. I want to shift my linux 
> server to a branded new machine as the old one was rented and now i have 
> my own desktop.
> I am really confuse how to proceed as
> -- will i first install linux on new machine and then step by step 
> ,reconfigure all the services i.e (local dns, dhcp, nis, wikki, 
> bugzilla, plone ,etc) ( if it's the right way , i will really be a big 
> pain :'( ) or;
> -- I can took off the hard drive from the older one and attached it to 
> new machine (but their will be lot of compatibility issue, ) or,
> -- I can install linux on new machine and COPY whole "/" from old one .
> 
> 
> I hope the above info will be sufficient for you to understand my problem.
> Plz show me a light ,as all around is dark
> 
> Thanks and regards to every one
> alok (newbie)

It rather depends on what you want to do.  If your old machine was
running an older version of the OS, you may want to start fresh with the
latest release.  If that's the case, then install the new OS first,
update it completely, then transfer your content to it.

If you're happy with the current system, then you can certainly plug the
old hard drive in and run it--provided the hardware platforms are
compatible.  In other words, if the old platform was a 64-bit beast
(Opteron, Athlon-64, IA-64), you can't use it on a 32-bit machine.  If
the old one was 32-bit, it should work on a 64-bit machine.

The most likely other things you'll need to tweak are the network
drivers (odds are that the new machine will use different NICs than the
old one).  These are the "alias eth0 somedrivername" lines in
your /etc/modprobe.conf file.  Kudzu may or may not find them when you
boot the old OS on the new hardware.

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- Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer             rstevens at internap.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
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-     Veni, Vidi, VISA:  I came, I saw, I did a little shopping.     -
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