Here is my dilema, we had a red hat 9 box setup by an outside vendor. Turns out that we don't need the robust hardware that we purchased for the web site. So, I would like to move the files and configuration and everything to a new machine. The new machine is not at all like the existing installation.

I have installed RH9 on the new machine but I am not sure where to begin. The partitions on not the same size but are more than adequate for the amount of data involved. Additionally the new server has a different raid controller.

Where should I start? I have a reasonable amount of linux knowledge but this is the first server that I have worked on. Luckily, this is a developement box at this point so I dont' have to worry about downtime at present.

- go to single user mode
- backup all the silesystem partitions (cpio, partimage, ...)
- create partitions, filesystems, swap on new machine
- restore backup

- boot from distro cd/dvd
- rewrite boot loader
- if hardware is different (e.g. from IDE to SCSI) check /etc/fstab, symlinks in /dev, etc
- if using a diferent CPU you may want to install a kernel optimized for your new CPU

hope this helps ...