The moving-your-system FAQ: Anything else I should know?
John Nielsen
lists at jnielsen.net
Sun Dec 17 15:32:03 PST 2006
On Sunday 17 December 2006 18:16, Oliver Iberien wrote:
> I'm about to move my system, I've read the FAQ, I don't want to rearrange
> anything. I want to make sure I have the process down correctly before I
> try, so I am asking here. I am using 6.0 #2.
>
> First, I hook up both drives. I partition the new hard drive and label it
> the same way as the previous drive.
>
> Then, I would reboot to single-user mode. I would use newfs to create new
> file systems form each new partition. I mount each partition in turn to a
> temporary mount point and change directory to the newly mounted
> partition. Then the FAQ gives the following command for the dump-copy
> process:
>
> dump 0af - / | restore xf -
>
> This is to be used without modification for each partition.
>
> It this really it? It seems... easy.
Yep, it's really that easy. I've been experimenting with different RAID
configurations on my main work PC and I've done this procedure at least
twice in the last few months. (I'll be doing it again in a couple weeks
when some new drives come in).
If you are changing additional hardware (besides just the hard drive), here
are some things to keep in mind:
If you have CPUTYPE set in /etc/make.conf you should be sure that the
setting you had for the old computer is compatible with the new computer.
If it's not, you should un-set it or set it to the lowest common
denominator between the two systems the rebuild world, kernel, and all your
ports (preferrably before you make the switch).
If you use a custom kernel be sure that it has support for the disk and
network devices on your new system. If it doesn't, add the drivers back in
or switch back to GENERIC.
It's entirely possible that your hard drive will come up as a different
device on your new system. This is especially true if you are moving from
e.g. IDE to SATA or something similar. The easiest way to deal with this is
after you make the switch. The kernel will boot but then fail to mount the
root filesystem and prompt for the name of the root device to use. Use the
kernel's boot output and your knowledge of how you laid out the disk to
supply the correct device name. After that, you'll probably get other mount
failures forcing the system to come up in single-user mode. Manually
mount /usr and re-mount / r/w so you can edit /etc/fstab with the right
values. Save and reboot.
You might need to do other things like reconfigure X, etc. but that can all
be handled after you make the switch.
JN
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