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#1 2013-03-29 13:14:34

toni
Member
Registered: 2011-10-15
Posts: 437

[SOLVED] Migrating archlinux from one laptop to another

I had installed arch in my old laptop but it has died recently..... so I have bought a new laptop which comes with W*****s 8 installed. So what I want to do is to take the hard drive from the old machine in which arch is installed, put it into an external 2.5 enclosure and connect it to the new laptop through USB 3.0. No problem till here, but my questions are:

1.- How to add an entry in w*****s 8 boot loader that points to arch linux installed in the old external hdd? or is it better to add linux boot loader at the MBR and add an entry that points to W*****s 8? In both cases, how to do this?
2.-I do not know if it is possible to take the arch in the old laptop as the hardware now is different. Is it possible or not? or better to install arch from the scratch in the new laptop?

Thanks in advance.

Last edited by toni (2013-04-27 15:07:24)

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#2 2013-03-29 13:52:49

olive
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2008-06-22
Posts: 1,490

Re: [SOLVED] Migrating archlinux from one laptop to another

Question 1.

If you put arch on an external hard drive, the best solution is to make the external hard drive bootable and select what you want to boot at the bios level. If you boot from the external USB drive, you can easily chainload Windows from the internal hard drive. The following syslinux entry should do it:

LABEL windows
       MENU LABEL Windows
       KERNEL chain.c32
       APPEND hd0 1

Question 2.
Yes it is possible. You can copy all the files (but preferably do it offline from a bootable CD and copy all the file attributes, cp -a should do it) or simply copy the partition. Then reinstall the boot loader.
Most hardware detection is done at run time. You have probably configured hardware specific things yourself, so hopefully you remember what you have done. I think of:

a) Adjust the UUID in the bootloader and /etc/fstab (if yiou use UUID).
b) /etc/xorg.conf if you have a custom one.
c) The sound card should be auto detected but the controls might not correspond. Remove /var/lib/alsa/asound.state and readjust the volume levels.

Anyway you should configure your hardware from a new installation too, so you would not gain anything by reinstalling.

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#3 2013-04-22 21:24:25

toni
Member
Registered: 2011-10-15
Posts: 437

Re: [SOLVED] Migrating archlinux from one laptop to another

Hi,
I have bought a 2.5 enclosure USB 3.0 and I have put my old hard drive in it. When booting my new laptop I select from a menu the external hard drive on which Arch is installed. No problem till here, Arch start booting but it crashes. Below is the output when booting:

.... usb 4-2: got a wrong device descriptor, carm reset device.
.....hub 4-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 2
Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/sda11...
.....sd 6:0:0:0 [sdb] No caching mode page present
.....sd 6:0:0:0 [sdb] Assuming device cache: Write through.

ERROR: resume: hibernation device '/dev/sda11' not found
Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/sda8...
ERROR: device '/dev/sda8' not found. Skipping fsck.
ERROR: Unable to find root device '/dev/sda8'

You are being dropped to a recovery shell
Type 'exit' to try and continue booting

In the old laptop, hard drive was referenced as sda, but now in the new laptop it is referenced as sdb as sda is the internal hard drive. It seems it is pointing to the incorrect hdd (sda) instead of (sdb).

How can I solve this?

Last edited by toni (2013-04-22 21:39:44)

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#4 2013-04-22 22:16:08

wakkadojo
Member
Registered: 2009-05-31
Posts: 50

Re: [SOLVED] Migrating archlinux from one laptop to another

What is your /etc/fstab? If you are using /dev/sdX as partition identifiers, and the external is showing up as /dev/sdY (Y != X), then it might not be able to find the partitions it's trying to mount and check.

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#5 2013-04-23 21:41:30

toni
Member
Registered: 2011-10-15
Posts: 437

Re: [SOLVED] Migrating archlinux from one laptop to another

wakkadojo wrote:

What is your /etc/fstab? If you are using /dev/sdX as partition identifiers, and the external is showing up as /dev/sdY (Y != X), then it might not be able to find the partitions it's trying to mount and check.

Hi,
My /etc/fstab was using /dev/sdaX as partition identifiers so as booting it is recognized as sdb, I have changed /dev/sdaX lines in /etc/fstab to /dev/sdbX but when booting I observe the same behaviour, same messages appear as I commented in the previous post. For some reason, there is a place that continue pointing to sda (internal hdd) instead of sdb (external hdd) so I wonder if there is another place where I have to change sda to sdb apart from /etc/fstab.

Note: I have booted from an Arch live cd and then I have done a chrooting and finally I have changed /etc/fstab lines.

Thanks in advance.

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#6 2013-04-23 22:20:54

toni
Member
Registered: 2011-10-15
Posts: 437

Re: [SOLVED] Migrating archlinux from one laptop to another

toni wrote:
wakkadojo wrote:

What is your /etc/fstab? If you are using /dev/sdX as partition identifiers, and the external is showing up as /dev/sdY (Y != X), then it might not be able to find the partitions it's trying to mount and check.

Hi,
My /etc/fstab was using /dev/sdaX as partition identifiers so as booting it is recognized as sdb, I have changed /dev/sdaX lines in /etc/fstab to /dev/sdbX but when booting I observe the same behaviour, same messages appear as I commented in the previous post. For some reason, there is a place that continue pointing to sda (internal hdd) instead of sdb (external hdd) so I wonder if there is another place where I have to change sda to sdb apart from /etc/fstab.

Note: I have booted from an Arch live cd and then I have done a chrooting and finally I have changed /etc/fstab lines.

Thanks in advance.

The problem was that in my syslinux.cfg was still pointing to sda hdd instead of sdb in APPEND line. So I have changed it from sda to sdb but now another problem appears:
Arch boots correctly from external hdd but during boot there is a moment that a continuous and annoying beep starts to sound and it does not stop. I do not kwow if the beep is caused by the BIOS or OS (Arch). I do not leave Arch to finish booting till login screen as this sound is very very annoying so I decide to shutdown. Is there a way to avoid this annoying beep to start?

Thanks.

Last edited by toni (2013-04-23 22:24:24)

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#7 2013-04-23 22:37:59

wakkadojo
Member
Registered: 2009-05-31
Posts: 50

Re: [SOLVED] Migrating archlinux from one laptop to another

You might be able to disable the PC speaker by blacklisting the kernel module. Check out https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Di … p#Globally

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#8 2013-04-23 22:51:24

toni
Member
Registered: 2011-10-15
Posts: 437

Re: [SOLVED] Migrating archlinux from one laptop to another

wakkadojo wrote:

You might be able to disable the PC speaker by blacklisting the kernel module. Check out https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Di … p#Globally

Ok, but I guess I cannot kept blacklisted kernel module forever. I guess it is only temporary, to enter Arch linux and once within Arch, to solve the problem and then remove the blacklist I have just introduced, right? Also, how to know what is causing this beep? Maybe sound card? As in my old laptop the sound card was different from the one in my new laptop, do I have to do something once within Arch (configure new sound card or is it automatically done by Arch)?

I have blacklisted pcspkr in /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf file but now when system booting it reaches to a point in which it freezes saying the following:

(...)
[OK] Reached target Multi-User
[OK] Reached target Graphical Interface

and then nothing happens... system does not finally boot. It seems like my graphical card is not being recognized... as in my old laptop Arch was configured to use a Nvidia and now my new laptop has an Intel HD graphics 4000. How to solve this?

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Last edited by toni (2013-04-23 23:56:03)

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#9 2013-04-24 18:30:36

toni
Member
Registered: 2011-10-15
Posts: 437

Re: [SOLVED] Migrating archlinux from one laptop to another

Hi again!
Finally I have got to login into Arch. I have uninstalled all packages related to nvidia (nvidia-304xx and nvidia-304xx-utils) and I have installed xf86-video-intel package. Also I have updated the system by doing pacman -Syu and removing xorg.conf from /etc/X11/xorg.conf as it was specific to nvidia from my old laptop.

I have created a new xorg.conf by doing:

Xorg :0 -configure

and then moving the /root/xorg.conf created to /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Now, the only thing is pending is to solve an issue with the sound card. As I posted previously here, I blacklisted pcspkr in /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf so I have removed this blacklist and no more annoying beep have occurred but I have no sound. I am currently trying to solve this.

I mark this as solved. I have posted a new issue related to sound card and OSS:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 3#p1264793

Last edited by toni (2013-04-27 15:06:36)

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