On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 07:14:03AM +0000, Ryan wrote:
> I've got hundred of hours invested into my redhat 7.3 box software
> configuration, but I'd like to move the system to a faster CPU, hard drive,
> etc. My problem is that I would like to maintain all the following during
> the switch:
[...]
While keeping the hard drives, I've done this a couple of times, with
varying systems. I usually swapped the mobo and/or CPU, then rebooted.
No problem. I even moved the harddrives to a different case (AT ->
ATX) with new everything (except SCSI controller and video card).
Two things to keep in mind, though: If you're using a customized
kernel (i.e. one you compiled yourself), it's probably a good idea to
have a standard Red Hat one around as well, unless you *know* that
your customized kernel supports all of the new hardware as well.
It's also a good idea to have a boot floppy around - I've had one
occasion where the new SCSI controller seemingly returned slightly
different values, causing LILO to fail. I think that Grub is a bit
more tolerant there.
It gets a bit more tricky when changing the hard drive itself, but
even that can be done. I usually install the new drive(s) in addition
to the existing one(s), making certain that the new ones come *after*
the old ones (Examples: For EIDE, if you already have hda, make the new one
hdb or hdc. For SCSI: If you have sda and sdb already, make the new
one sdc). I then partition the new drive(s) using fdisk, then format
them (mkfs and mkswap). Then I mount them somewhere on the existing
filesystem and copy all the stuff from the old system. A few points to
observe:
- I recommend to copy /home and /var in single user mode,
prefereably as the last step. That way you're certain to have all
changes included.
- I usually take care not to copy the lost+found directories - the new
partitions will already have them and they will be the right size.
If you overwrite them with old ones, that might not be the case.
I usually rename or remove the ones on the old partitions (depending
what I'm going to do with those partitions later).
- Do *not* copy /proc - just make an empty "proc" directory on the new
/ partition.
- Make sure you don't copy across mount points. Example: If you have
separate /usr and /usr/local partitions on both the old system and
the new system (I usually do), if you were to do 'cp -a /usr
/NEW_ROOT', you would copy the whole /usr/local onto /NEW_ROOT/usr as
well. This is not what you want - you want /usr/local to end up on
its own, new partition. The best way around that is to mount all new
partitions in place, e.g. mount /NEW_ROOT/usr, then make a new
directory /NEW_ROOT/usr/local and mount the new /usr/local partition
there. Now you can copy the whole /usr in one go and everything will
end up where it belongs.
Note that this will depend entirely on how you want the system to be
laid out - the above is just an example.
- Once you have copied everything, make sure you adapt
/NEW_ROOT/etc/fstab to reflect the new mount points (in case they're
different from the old system). Keep in mind that you'll be moving
the drives (e.g. what's now sdc (new drive) will become sda later).
After you've done all that, shut down the machine, move the new drives
into the correct places (EIDE controller, SCSI ID, ...), remove the
old ones and reboot USING A BOOTFLOPPY!!! You will need the boot disk as
you need to reinstall grub or LILO on the new drive.
NOTE: The above is probably not 100% complete - my intention was to
show up a few things that need to be considered. If I missed something
important, hopefully others will fill in...
Cheerio,
Thomas
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Thomas Ribbrock http://www.ribbrock.org ICQ#: 15839919
"You have to live on the edge of reality - to make your dreams come true!"
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