Easiest way to move my installation to my new laptop ? Cloning the drive ?

[Phil Meyer]

linuxguy wrote:
> My laptop has quit.   I am getting a new one.   My old laptop has a 32
> bit Intel processor.   My new laptop has a dual 64 bit AMD processor, as
> well as different peripherals.
>
> What is the easiest way to move my current installation to the new
> machine ?
>
> Is there a way to clone the current hard drive to the new hard drive and
> then force an update to all the hardware dependent files ? (ie kernel,
> etc ?)
>   

My job requires me to do this quite often.

Others have talked about backup/restore, but the easiest way is to put 
the old drive into the new system.

On F9

In the new system with old drive, or on the old system before moving the 
drive, boot into rescue mode:

at the prompt:

rm /mnt/sysimage/etc/udev/rules.d/*persistant* 
/mnt/sysimage/etc/X11/xorg.conf

exit


That will eliminate MOST of the hardware configurations, and they will 
be rediscovered.

You may or may not need to run system-config-display after booting from 
the drive.  F9 versions of the X server do not 'need' /etc/X11/xorg.conf 
to run, but may need it to run properly.

That is a 10 minute exercise vs the 3-8 hours for the backup/restore method.

Having said that, there may be valid reasons to spend the time, and 
backups are ALWAYS a good thing.  YMWV

Good Luck!