migrating Arch to a new PC

sardaukar · 2011-03-30 10:31:41

Hello all.

I run Arch now as my main OS, and Win7 for great Starcraft 2 justice. I dual-boot, using Windows' boot loader but will be getting a new PC soon just for Linux! What is the surefire way of making it work? I was thinking of hooking up my current disk as slave, booting with a live-cd, DDing the whole partition over to the new hard-drive, readjusting /etc/fstab, and it would Just Work (right?).

Will this copy over the bootloader? Is there a better way?

Thanks for any feedback.

jdarnold · 2011-03-30 10:44:21

Do you really need to copy the Arch install? Why not take this opportunity to start from scratch with Arch anyway. Install a new Arch, copy over your /home folder and add apps as you use/need them. That's usually how I do it, anyway.

fredre · 2011-03-30 10:51:04

I imagine you could have issues if the new computer uses different hardware. e.g. the old computer has a Nvidia chip and the new one has ATI, the old one is i686 the new one is x86_64 etc. I think the best way to go about it would be to just back up all your important data and install from scratch.

bohoomil · 2011-03-30 11:04:59

Technically it may be possible, but it doesn't make too much sense. Unless your new PC is an exact copy of the old one, you're most likely to encounter all kind of 'surprise' errors, unexpected behaviours, or at least performance issues possible. Take your time and do a fresh install so your hardware is recognized properly and in the most rudimentary way optimized. You will probably save lots of time this way.

dobedo · 2011-03-30 11:13:12

@sardaukar: I used this in the past (or something very similar) to transfer my system from one machine to another: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fu … with_rsync
I had to change the nvidia driver also iirc.

sardaukar · 2011-03-30 11:22:50

Just wanted to keep my stuff, because there's a lot of time involved in setting it up (it's a development machine). But I guess a full install can't hurt...

Barrucadu · 2011-03-30 11:23:09

Last year I moved my Arch install from a laptop to a desktop simply by transplanting the HDD, and the only thing that broke was X, as I was using a xorg.conf rather than having it do its automagic configuration thing. Other than that, everything worked perfectly. YMMV.

sardaukar · 2011-03-30 11:27:27

I'll try the cloning. An install is easy, anyway

stqn · 2011-03-30 13:40:54

Yeah, Linux is not Windows, you can copy your existing install to use it on different hardware. A 32 bit install also works perfectly fine on 64 bit hardware. (I did that but using cp -ar instead of dd.)

ninian · 2011-03-30 15:17:20

# rsync -av --delete /source/ /target/
then fixup GRUB, fstab and your video driver, and that's about it!
(with a new machine, even the --delete is unnecessary)

ANOKNUSA · 2011-03-30 15:54:30

Aside from video card etc., you'll also want to make sure you properly align the partition, should the new hard drive use 4k sectors. Other than that, config file clean-up is the only real hands-on task; cloning is really just a matter of waiting (and waiting, and waiting...). Good luck to ya!

sardaukar · 2011-03-30 17:00:57

Thanks for all the feedback, guys!

Arch Linux

#1 2011-03-30 10:31:41

migrating Arch to a new PC

#2 2011-03-30 10:44:21

Re: migrating Arch to a new PC

#3 2011-03-30 10:51:04

Re: migrating Arch to a new PC

#4 2011-03-30 11:04:59

Re: migrating Arch to a new PC

#5 2011-03-30 11:13:12

Re: migrating Arch to a new PC

#6 2011-03-30 11:22:50

Re: migrating Arch to a new PC

#7 2011-03-30 11:23:09

Re: migrating Arch to a new PC

#8 2011-03-30 11:27:27

Re: migrating Arch to a new PC

#9 2011-03-30 13:40:54

Re: migrating Arch to a new PC

#10 2011-03-30 15:17:20

Re: migrating Arch to a new PC

#11 2011-03-30 15:54:30

Re: migrating Arch to a new PC

#12 2011-03-30 17:00:57

Re: migrating Arch to a new PC

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