Moving a debian install to a new motherboard

[Markbnj]

Hey guys, I am going to be swapping out some hardware for an upgrade to my main machine, and the benefits will trickle down. The current main machine motherboard will go into my debian box, in other words: keep the drive and swap out everything else. I have a good process for doing this for XP that is reliable, but I haven't done it for linux before. Any tips?

 

[Crusty]

You really shouldn't have any problems unless you are using some piece of exotic hardware. The biggest problem you might run into is a change of video drivers and X not starting up. You can change your driver to Vesa beforehand to clear that up though. If you are using MAC based static DHCP leases you'll want to take care to change that on your DHCP server to recognize your new MAC on the motherboard so you can at least get in via ssh if something doesn't quite work. Worst case, you would have to boot up with a live CD to fix any driver/kernel problems.

Are you using any raid controllers onboard or via expansion slot?

 

[Markbnj]

Thanks, Crusty. Nope, no RAID or via expansion. This is currently my alt machine and is a file server and bind/squid server for the home network, so nothing exotic at all. The motherboard it will be getting is an MSI/Neo 4F with X2-4400, onboard sound, gigabit lan, and a 7600GT card from BFG. So there is more on the new board, but still nothing exotic. Good point on the MAC addresses, but I can jimmy that at the router no problem.

 

[Nothinman]

You might want to look at and delete /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent* first so that they're regenerated in the new machine but that's about it.

 

[Markbnj]

Thanks for the tip, Nothinman.