At Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:55:49 -0600 CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org wrote:
Robert Heller wrote:
At Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:33:38 -0600 CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org wrote:
Jussi Hirvi wrote:
What should I do to make an existing CentOS (5.4) disc boot up on a new computer? [...] Would it be enough to boot with a DVD in rescue mode, or boot with another hd, and install grub?
On 16.12.2009 12:16, Sorin Srbu wrote:
For me it has worked to just install the old hd in the new machine and boot it up. Kudzo takes care of the rest.
Then you have been lucky. :-) For me, the startup stopped already before the CentOS splash screen. I guess something was wrong with the initrd.
If the disk holding the / partition needs a different driver than what you had during the install, you have to rebuild the initrd. Anaconda knows how to do that, kudzo can't. You can do it from a rescue-mode boot, but you may have to know the right module names.
*Before* swapping out the old disk, add an appropriate scsi_hostadapterN (N >= 1) alias to /etc/modprobe.conf and then do:
mkinitrd -f /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img `uname -r`
All should be good then.
IF both the old machine and the new machine have your basic, vanila IDE disks, then there is no problem.
I've always wished the install/rescue disk had a mode to do this for you after you've moved the disks or restored a backup. The reason you are trying to bring up the new machine may be that the old one is dead - and anaconda knows a lot more about picking the right driver modules than I ever will. I've done it a time or two by installing a system on the new (or matching) hardware with a separate /boot partition, then making sure the old/new systems are updated to the same versions and keeping the new /boot but copying the rest of the old system over.
Until very recently, I've moved disks from one AHA-29xxx SCSI system to another AHA-29xxx SCSI system. Same driver, different controller card... My latest move was on the same system, different disks: SCSI disks (AHA-29160N controller) to SATA (ahci flavored controller). In this case, the motherboard, etc. were working just fine (so where one of the *old* SCSI disks -- it died a couple of weeks later). The AHA-29160N controller card is still in the machine, with nothing connected to it (one never knows if some interesting piece of hardware happens along).
As for proper module: you just need to pay close attention to what anaconda is doing as it loads drivers. At least that is what I've seen. (I *always* use text mode with install/rescue disks.)