I'm currently running Mandrake 10.1 Official on a clone AMD Athlon 500mhz with IDE drives. I just bought a Dell SC420, celeron, with SATA and wondering if there is any chance that i'll be able to migrate my configuration onto the new box. I have spent the last year getting things tuned and tweaked to work well on the clone and really don't want to go thru all that again. (apache, mysql, spamassassin, clamav, nagios, samba, on and on.)

Is it likely that I can install Mandrake 10.1 Official on the Dell SC420 then restore over the top of the OS my OS from the clone? I realize I'll have some issue to deal with, like hda will now be sda, etc - but is it doable?

Thanks - hopefully this isn't a totally insane question - just trying to save some time.

Thank you.

Bryan

Copy your configs for the servers you have installed (deamons) and copy your home directory. If you just copy the whole install you willprobably break everything. the config files, however should be for the same versions of the software if you intend to install the same version of mandrake.

it's actually relatively easy as long as you can remember everything you changed. Also, most 'tweaks' are platform specific, so be careful about over-writing files which apply to the wya your hardware works.

Good Luck.

Also, be prepared for a fight with sata, there are several known issues. You may want to research them before deciding to stay with this machine.

It might be better / cheaper to build this machine from scratch instead, so th at you can verfy compaitbility with linux for each component. YOu might also want to buy a linux compatible product instead. Dell has an ongoing downward trend in support for linux on its hardware. I wouldn't expect this to be easy.

Also, It might be better to use a less bloated distribution if you're using this for a server. Using X-windows system on the machine will significantly impact performance. Even as compared to MS windows server 2003. Just some thoughts.

Thank you for the quick response. I'm kinda stuck with the hardware, so I'll have to go the route you suggested of trying each component one at a time. I guess since I'll have an 'up and running' machine (the old clone) I should be able to get the new machine going just by installing, checking the configs on the old machine and matching on the new till it works the way i like then move mailboxes, etc over to the new boxes and point router at the new box for web/mail/etc.

As for picking a 'less bloated' distribution - I know this is a dangerous question - what distro would you suggest? I don't want X other than the base install, no KDE, blah blah. What I like so much about mandrake is urpmi, if there was a distribution that makes it so easy to keep up to date I'd love to try that. I'm not much for picking every single package that goes on the machine and I really don't want to have to complie everything - I'll suffer the performance for keeping it simple to install and maintain. If you have a suggestion on a distro, that would be greatly appreciated. I've downloaded the ISO's for Fedora core3, is that a good one? been afraid to try just because I'm used to mandrake. I don't need bleeding edge and want it to be easy to keep up to date.

this would be strictly a server box, no interactive logon (unless having problems) - just want it to sit there and hum along with the following servers

apache
ssh
ftp
imap
postfix
mysql
clamav
spamassassin
clamassassin
samba

Thanks so much for your help.

Bryan