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Upgrading the Motherboards of Linux Boxen?
synchronicity asks: "I just got a new motherboard and processor and would otherwise like to keep my system setup exactly as it is now. Every site I have visited about upgrading a motherboard and processor ends with something to the effect of 'When your machine boots up, Windows will be confused for a little bit, but will detect all your hardware as new, reboot itself a few times, and then you'll be up and running again.' All well and good, except that I don't run Windows. So what do I need to do to get my Linux (Mandrake 7.2) system to recognize the new PCI bus addresses/interrupts/etc. to make this upgrade a success?" What things do you do in preparation for such a procedure?
right, except when you install a new processor, unless you reinstall windows (and repeat all those steps you listed, replacing "linux" with "windows"), your windows install won't take advantage of any new features in the new processor (SSE, 3dnow, whatever)
So, if you're upgrading, you really ought to reinstall no matter what OS you're running.
-NeoTomba
Do the same as in Windows, but without the reboots. ;)
Serious, Linux's hardware management is way superior to Windows', provided the hardware is compliant (which is most of it now that ISA PNP is out). Try it, you'll be surprised.
If you're using the stock Mandrake kernel and -just- changing the motherboard, you should just be able to reboot and go to town since it's already got damned near everything compiled in or available as a module. If you've gone and compiled a custom kernel, you just need to make one that's correct for your new mobo and boot from that.
Even changing mobos on windows isn't -that- bad. I've got my dad's machine still running the factory win95 install (he refuses to let me reinstall or upgrade) after both a mobo and HDD upgrade. All you need to do is go to the device manager and remove devices before you shutdown the final time. When you come back up it'll re-recognize all the devices, and you're good to go.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Well, I did exactly the same you did, only in my case it was a downgrade.
My first distribution was Slackware 3.0, but after having some problems with it, I moved to Redhat 4.3, and stuck with it to this day (running 7.2 atm). Somewhere along my computer upgrades, I ended up with a spare 4.3 Gb hdd, and I decided to give Slack a try again. I installed it on my box, I decided I liked it, but the school year started, before I could do anything more with it. So it stayed unused for a couple of months.
BTW, the box that I used for the install was a Dual Celeron on an Abit BP6 board, TNT2 video, SB Live sound, CDROM, 3Com nic, etc.
Then I decided to upgrade my gateway, from a P100 to something more, and I got a good deal on a P166 box, complete with ATI video (Rage II), no sound, no CDROM, no hdd, nothing else.
Since I had the 4.3Gb hdd already with Slack on it, I decided to give it a try. I also added a Dlink and a 3Com nic, and a sb16. I was amazed to find out that EVERYTHING worked out of the box, except XFree86, but that was to be expected! I did not touch anything, and everyting was configured, as if Slack had been installed on the p166, and not on a DUAL Celeron.
So with any luck your box should be useable, with only minor tweaks. You are keeping everything the same (video, sound, nics, etc), and are just changing the CPU and mb. You should run into even fewer problems than with Windows.
So, if you're upgrading, you really ought to reinstall no matter what OS you're running.
What are you smoking? Even cheap crack won't give you that kind of buzz...
When you first boot up, you're right -- you won't get all the nifty new features. However you do not need to <cough> reinstall -- just recompile the kernel and any key apps you run. You will not see a performance increase on your P4 by recompiling everything. Hell 99% of the time the compiler is generating i386 or i486-optimized code!
Not even on Windows do you get much added benefit by reinstalling -- the drivers are i386, the applications are i386, everything is compiled for the lowest common denominator. The higher-end drivers will be optimized for P5 or P6, but that's about it unless you have some really specialized hardware or tweaked drivers for multimedia codecs.
Windows blows chunks for doing major hardware upgrades because the OS becomes confused when you change "too much" at once. It blows chunks because most of the configuration is stored in a proprietary binary format. It blows chunks because its only partially able to come down to a textmode level so you can clean up. NT is better at this than Win95/98/ME, but it's still not close to the flexibility you have with Linux/FreeBSD. One of my most favourite things is how you can pull a HDD out of pretty much any i386 platform and snap it into another one and boot up. If you compile in a ton of network drivers as modules, you can damn near get net access on any computer with that same drive. Try that with Windows.
With Linux, you shouldn't have to do a thing, assuming you didn't have a crazy drive controller that was remapping the hard drive in a strange way. (Rare, and unheard of on anything post-486, afaik.)
At worst, you may have to make a boot disk and run lilo or equivalent on the new machine. Making a boot disk just takes a few seconds, and it may save you a headache - do that before you yank things apart.
If the thing does topple, it's more likely to be on starting X than anything else. Be sure you know how to disable kdm/gdm/xdm long enough to play with your configuration and you'll be okay.
I upgraded the motherboard/CPU on my dual-boot box from an Abit P2/300 to a Soyo P3/1000. My Linux installation just recognized the new chipsets properly at the next reboot without any complaints.
Windows had a shit-fit. Claimed to have found all new EVERYthing - hard disks, sound cards, modems, cd drives, video, mice. Sometimes it found two or three of each kind, and it kept on finding new stuff at every reboot. Ended up having to do a complete reinstall, which was no real hardship since I only use that partition for games. But even with a clean re-install it doesn't seem to be able to shutdown or reboot from Windows anymore.
hell, I think you're all wrong(in respect to Windows that is). you've all missed the obvious one.
what you do is create a second profile. when you reboot the hard drive in a new box after shutting down, you select the second profile so that it will find all the new hardware. the system should work fine. if you start to have problems, you just use your old mobo and other hardware (you DID save it, right?) to get you backup and running.
creating a secondary profile is also what allows you to switch your hard drive between different boxen, like I do all the time. I pull my hard drive out, take it to my buddy's house 100 miles away, stick it in his system and boot, and then show him the slick stuff I got, all without having to backup nothing to Zip or anything else.
I'm good with numbers -
linux (Redhat 6.something at the time) booted first time, no problem. I recompiled the kernel later just to update a few things (eg, CPU type). I could probably have done that before taking the box down, so you could count this as one boot if you have a box up all the time and plan it right.
Windows (95, version 2 with USB support) required something like 3-4 reboots as it tried to find drivers for everything. It eventually booted up OK and actually worked pretty well.
As plenty others have said, provided you don't have anything "funny", you should be OK. Despite what others say, your X setup should probably still work fine, but you may wish to disable it before taking the box down (eg, by changing default runlevel for redhat or removing the xdm init script in /etc/rc?.d). If you've compiled in some weird IDE controller or whatever, linux will probably still boot, but a stock linux kernel (ie, whatever came with your distribution) is likely to be your safest bet.
This was moderated up to interesting???
Just recompile your kernel. There is no reason to a erase a bunch of packages then put them all back. Just recompile and re-do your X-Windows settings for the new hardware.