Linux coping with mainboard, memory and graphics card replacement?
Hi, My PC hardware is getting somewhat long in the tooth now, and is running Debian Testing AMD64. At some point, I'll probably end up inheriting or buying a new mainboard, RAM and graphics card. I've spent an awful lot of time getting my OS configured the way I like it, though, and am not really looking forward to having to rebuild it again. How well would Linux cope if I swapped out the guts of the PC like this? I appreciate I'd have to update X to use the correct drivers for the new graphics card, but I'm not sure about the on-board sound card. That was auto-recognised on install, so is it likely to be detected if the mainboard is changed? Perhaps also worth mentioning that I selected to encrypt my OS hard drive when I installed it. Thoughts on anyone who's tried it ... ? Peter.
On Wed, 2009-02-04 at 13:10 +0000, samwise wrote:
How well would Linux cope if I swapped out the guts of the PC like this? I appreciate I'd have to update X to use the correct drivers for the new graphics card, but I'm not sure about the on-board sound card. That was auto-recognised on install, so is it likely to be detected if the mainboard is changed? Perhaps also worth mentioning that I selected to encrypt my OS hard drive when I installed it.
Mostly unless you have something exotic going on in the Drive controller department it will just work..later builds of X run pretty much configless as well so you might not even have to reconfigure X. Sound should be autodetected but if not there are ways of prodding alsa to make it happen I have done it a few times...once to install Xubuntu on my old sub notebook which didn't have a CD rom and couldn't boot from USB or Netboot and once when changing machines whilst feeling as lazy as you :) The other approach is that given most of your configuration will be living in /etc or .files in your home dir..Just get dpkg to dump a list of installed packages and feed that into apt-get when you have reinstalled after you have copied over /etc and your home dir(s). If you are going to the same version of the same distro that should be fine(ish). Of course if you have been installing from source or tinkering lots with other bits then it might not work out so well. Generally I take the opportunity for a fresh installation and just copy over /home at the 3 year point when I change machines. Linux doesn't suffer bit rot the same way windows does but my brain when remembering what I have done to a machine in the past does and rebuilding the config how I like it every 3 years refreshes stuff in my mind.
Thanks, Wayne. You've confirmed what I mostly suspected. I agree that a reinstall would the better way to go, but the thought of setting everything up again is something I really don't want to face right now. I generally try to restrict myself to packaged versions of software, where possible, but reinstalling the few bits that I have hand-compiled shouldn't be too much of a problem. I've made no attempt to fiddle at the drive controller level, so that should be OK too. It was really only the encrypted FS that made me stop and think, but I don't think that should be tied to the hardware. Cheers, Peter. 2009/2/4 Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk>:
On Wed, 2009-02-04 at 13:10 +0000, samwise wrote:
How well would Linux cope if I swapped out the guts of the PC like this? I appreciate I'd have to update X to use the correct drivers for the new graphics card, but I'm not sure about the on-board sound card. That was auto-recognised on install, so is it likely to be detected if the mainboard is changed? Perhaps also worth mentioning that I selected to encrypt my OS hard drive when I installed it.
Mostly unless you have something exotic going on in the Drive controller department it will just work..later builds of X run pretty much configless as well so you might not even have to reconfigure X.
Sound should be autodetected but if not there are ways of prodding alsa to make it happen
I have done it a few times...once to install Xubuntu on my old sub notebook which didn't have a CD rom and couldn't boot from USB or Netboot and once when changing machines whilst feeling as lazy as you :)
The other approach is that given most of your configuration will be living in /etc or .files in your home dir..Just get dpkg to dump a list of installed packages and feed that into apt-get when you have reinstalled after you have copied over /etc and your home dir(s). If you are going to the same version of the same distro that should be fine(ish).
Of course if you have been installing from source or tinkering lots with other bits then it might not work out so well.
Generally I take the opportunity for a fresh installation and just copy over /home at the 3 year point when I change machines. Linux doesn't suffer bit rot the same way windows does but my brain when remembering what I have done to a machine in the past does and rebuilding the config how I like it every 3 years refreshes stuff in my mind.
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On Wed, 2009-02-04 at 13:10 +0000, samwise wrote:
Hi,
My PC hardware is getting somewhat long in the tooth now, and is running Debian Testing AMD64. At some point, I'll probably end up inheriting or buying a new mainboard, RAM and graphics card. .. How well would Linux cope if I swapped out the guts of the PC like this?
You asked for comments from someone who has done it before. I don't have the experience with the encryption though I have swapped a mainboard and still been able to boot the new system. When I last did this, which was a while ago now, the kernel was a custom one with things like IDE and filesystem drivers built in so I checked that the kernel had the necessary drivers for the new mainboard. If that was OK at least I would be able to boot on the new mainboard and sort out other things afterwards. These days most distribution kernels have just about every imaginable driver compiled as a module and rely on hotplug/udev to load the modules for the hardware actually found. In the case of drivers for filesystems and disk controllers these would also go an initial ramdisk so the modules can still be loaded based on what is found, but before the proper root filesystem is mounted. I'd try it and see. If you can't make it work you can always fall back on re-installing. I'd make sure I had the encryption key written down and a note of the partitions that should not be reformatted before you do the mainboard swap so that if you swap and it won't boot you don't have to swap back to get this info before running the installer. Regards, Steve.
Hi, 2009/2/6 Steve Fosdick <lists@pelvoux.nildram.co.uk>:
on re-installing. I'd make sure I had the encryption key written down and a note of the partitions that should not be reformatted before you do the mainboard swap so that if you swap and it won't boot you don't
Yes, a very good idea might be to print out the output of fdisk -l /dev/<your disk>, so you can recover your partitions later. Or dd the first 512 bytes of the disk to a file and put it on a pen drive etc. (this might be good practice, in general) Or just dd the whole drive to another machine as a backup copy, then you can play with the reinstall as much as you like. Srdjan
participants (4)
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samwise -
Srdjan Todorovic -
Steve Fosdick -
Wayne Stallwood