Re: Transferring Linux hard drive to a new system
From: Robert Heller (heller_at_deepsoft.com)
Date: 09/21/03
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Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 22:58:27 +0000
matt@killermookie.org (Matthew Sims),
In a message on 20 Sep 2003 08:04:31 -0700, wrote :
MS> Hello,
MS>
MS> In about a couple of weeks I'll be moving my Linux server to something
MS> more powerful. I was thinking of just moving the hard drive over to
MS> the new machine and start it up. But the last time I did that it
MS> corrupted my /usr partition. I don't know what caused it but from what
MS> I could tell it appeared that the OS was writing to the wrong sectors,
MS> as if it was out of sync to where the data was on the drive. My
MS> speculation was the motherboard but the motherboard wasn't damaged. In
MS> fact, I ended up (had no other choice) re-installing the whole system
MS> and never saw another problem again on the clean install.
MS>
MS> Has anyone had any issues moving a Linux hard drive to a new machine?
MS> Is that reliable or should I just go through the pain and re-install
MS> all my software. I run a mail server and web server with all the bells
MS> and whistles and not too keen on having to go through all that.
I've never had such problems. I done it a few times. I've always used
SCSI disks though. The only issues would be geometry issues (which can
cause issues with sector addressing). Are these IDE (should NOT be used
for a server) or SCSI. Oh, if SCSI, it is usually *best* if the new
machine uses the same sort of SCSI controller, since different SCSI
controllers can have different ideas about disk geometry. SCSI disks
don't actually have any disk geometry. The cylinder/head/sector
business is a hold-over from MFM/RLL disks, used in the old HardCards
(which evolved into IDE disks) -- SCSI BIOS *fake* a geometry to be
compatible with DOS/MS-Windows BIOS calls. Since the standard PC
partition table is coded in terms of cylinder/head/sector numbers, this
can cause the location of the partitions to shift if a *different* BIOS
geometry is used, which would be seriously bad news. You might want to
transplant the SCSI controller with the disks to be sure.
I've also done a *couple* of Linux 'cross installs' with laptops
that lacked suitable removable media devices -- my own '486 laptop
(which only has a floppy disk drive and I don't have a fully
functionally home network and the other with a UMass grad student who
has an ultra-light IBM ThinkPad (no floppy or CD-ROM). Both down with
the hard drive installed in a desktop as /dev/hda and used as the
install target. In both cases the hard drive was transplanted back and
both laptops booted right up. A certain amount of post install
fiddling was needed, but nothing serious, mostly fine-tuning X11 and
what not.
I *sounds* like there is something else causing trouble for you.
Note: if you have a '586 kernel installed on the original machine and
the new machine is something else, you could have trouble. If there is
*any* doubt, you might want to install a '386 kernel (and maybe make
sure your glibc is also a '386 version as well) *before* you transplant
the drive. Certain of the processor-specific optimizations are rather
processor-specific (Duh!). Kernels, etc. compiled for generic '386
will run without problems on any x86 processor. Maybe a (tiny) *bit*
slower, but at least you won't get odd kernel panics and/or disk
corruption problems.
MS>
MS> --Matt
MS>
\/
Robert Heller ||InterNet: heller@cs.umass.edu
http://vis-www.cs.umass.edu/~heller || heller@deepsoft.com
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