On Sun, 2016-09-18 at 00:13 +0100, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
Hi,
My in-home server is at the end of it's tether, and I need to move to new hardware (motherboard, psu, case, fans etc) before the old one finally fails.
This is a very stupid question. Under windows, in days of old (win 95, 98, xp for instance), I've had some success in the past, with just transferring hard disks into the new machine, and then installing relevant drivers.
Would this work under linux? (I'm running xubuntu)
Yes.
If not, what's the best way to go? Installing the same version of xubuntu on the new machine with the same packages as the old one, then copying the data and config files, or copying everything from the old machine and then booting from a live cd and installing from there over the top of the transferred data, then tweaking or restoring the customised config files, or something else?
After some 23 years doing Unix/Solaris/Linux things, what I do with my home stuff when I do a major upgrade is ...
- Buy new disk(s). I use this as an excuse to increase the size of the disks.
- Install the new disk(s), then install the O/S from scratch. This allows me to tidy up, if necessary. If you don't want to tidy up, but just want the easy route, you can just save your current package list and reinstall it on the new O/S, thus;
dpkg --get-selections > dpkg_list.txt
Restore this using;
sudo dpkg --set-selections < dpkg_list.txt sudo apt-get -y update sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade
- I then copy my home directory off the old disk, by mounting it in a USB/SATA dock on the new hardware. That also automatically creates a full back of the old system, since I still have the old disk(s).
- I also keep /home on a separate partition, since this makes "in place" upgrades much easier, should I ever want to do one. FWIW, I also have a /data partition. These two things make backups a lot easier, also.
Rgds,
H.