How to move Linux OS to differnent computer?
 

What is the easiest way to move a Linux systems' discs a new computer, and get it to recognize the new hardware?

I have a Red Hat Linux system that I need to move from one computer to another. The new harware has a new motherboard and a different SCSI controler.

I thought I could just move the disk to the new computer and perform an "upgrade" installation and the install would recognize the new hardware and be done with it.

The upgrade install went fine, but when I rebooted it failed. I noticed that the system is still trying to load the old SCSI modules. Obviously the "upgrade" install did not notice that there was different hardware, so it continued to use the old hardware drivers.

There must be a way to quickly restore a system when hardware fails, but the hard disks are fine. We can't be expected to have an identical computer lying around, can we?

- Joe

In general, chkconfig --level 345 kudzu on will make sure kudzu (the hardware detector) is activated during boot. Then just pull the harddrive out, install in the new machine and boot 'er up. It should recognize that old HW is gone, and new kit is present.

for your SCSI issues, edit /etc/modules.conf and remove and kernel modules for SCSI. If you passed any arguments to the kernel at boot time, you may need to remove these from /boot/grub/grub.conf

At this point I think I have just the SCSI issue. The systems is still trying to load the old SCSI card driver.

I changed /etc/modules.conf to reflect the new SCSI module (i.e. alias scsi_hostadapter aha1542), and made sure that aha1542.o was in /lib/modules/<kernelversion>/kernel/drivers/scsi/.

Here is the part of the boot up screen when it gets to loading the SCSI driver:
...
Loading scsi_mod module
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
Loading sd_mod module
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
Loading aic7xxx module
/lib/aic7xxx.o: init_module
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including inva
lid IO or IRQ parameters
ERROR: /bin/insmod exited abnormally!
...

I don't know where it is getting the idea to load aic7xxx, when the existing hardware is aha1542. Is this stored in the boot image that grub calls when loading the kernel? Shouldn't the upgrade process have realised that the new scsi adpater was the aha1540, and replaced whatever was used previously in the boot partition?

- Joe

Install Linux on the other computer.

While a basic text/console based install can be moved to similar hardware (ix86 to ix86; IDE to IDE and so forth) any major changes are best delt with by a new install and transfer of needed files.

If you really think it's worth the work; shutting off start to Xwindows and working to add correct drivers or options may work.

Anything hardcoded into a setup text file can be changed with a Tom's floppy or Knoppix CD.

Good Luck.