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View Full Version : [ubuntu] Moving to new base unit - system transfer



F W Adams
February 19th, 2009, 10:22 AM
Hi, I have a problem with transferring my system over. The old machine is still in use and operational at the moemnt using 8.04. On the new one I have done a clean install of 8.04 ( with no internet connection ) and that seems to be fine. I have a USB drive with which I can transfer data between the two. Transferring the /home partition is no problem as it is just a matter of copying over the whole of /home but what about the system. Obviously I want to transfer all the system tweaks / system downloads etc. I have done on the old machine since I started using Ubuntu, onto the new machine. At the same time I am relectant to copy the whole / onto the new machine as the hardware is different and something may not work. I'm just not sure exactly what I should and what I should not copy over. I just don't know enough about the workings of / to know which files are hardware related.

I'm not sure its relevant but both machines loaded with alernate 8.04 32 bit CD and using full encryrption. They have different motherboards, processor, sound, graphics, disks etc.

Thanks for any help.

yoyoned
February 19th, 2009, 01:00 PM
linux is much smarter about detecting new hardware on the fly than windows. I have take a drive out of a box and put it in another many times with no issues. There shouldn't be any problen cloning the drive to another computer.

F W Adams
February 19th, 2009, 07:53 PM
Yes but taking a drive from one box and putting it into a new one is not what I am trying to do, I'm trying to take the software from the disk in one box and put it onto another box onto a different disk.

I tried booting up the new box and copying the old data onto / ( perhaps wreckless ) but it crashes ( reboots followed by hanging? ). Then I had to reload the new box from scratch again to getback where I started.

F W Adams
February 21st, 2009, 10:38 AM
Tried a different approach today. Tried booting from desktop CD, getting access to encrypted drive and then copying the old / data, already previously put on a USB drive from old machine, onto the new /. Again the same result as above, although running under the CD OS, system suddenly reboots? and then hangs up on "Running local bootscripts ( /etc/rc.local )"

Obviously I can't get away with copying the whole of / over. What do I need to copy over to get the same packages, that I had on before?

Any help?

mig10k
June 15th, 2010, 12:07 AM
hi there,

i wrote an article about my transfer of ubuntu to my new laptop from my old one. everything worked very well and i posted every command i run.

you can read it here: http://mig10k.blogspot.com/2010/06/dell-inspiron-1750-transfering-ubuntu.html