moving linux around

[Andres Gonzalez]

Thanks for your responses guys. I feel better about trying it.

-Andres


Doran L. Barton wrote:
> Not long ago, Andres Gonzalez proclaimed...
>> Can I take a hard drive that has linux installed on it, and use it on a  
>> different mobo, without having to install linux again?
> 
> For the most part, yes. It's certainly a lot easier than it is with
> Winbloze where you've got all sorts of roadblocks built into the OS that
> are tied to a signature of the hardware.
> 
> What could you have trouble with? My most frequent problem is drivers for
> SATA or SCSI controllers. If you move the hard disk from a system that has,
> say, a NVidia SATA controller to a system that has a Silicon Image SATA
> controller, the initial RAMdisk image (initrd), which contains kernel
> modules to load at boot time, will not have the right modules for your
> system.
> 
> While this is tragic, in a sense, a boot into Fedora rescue mode will fix
> the problem. You just have to build a new initial RAMdisk image for the
> kernel with the mkinitrd command. 
> 
> Another problem, also related to disks and booting, is the BIOS disk order.
> You may have to play with GRUB to get this sorted out if you're not moving
> from a machine with one disk to a machine with one disk. 
>