Brain transplant for Debian testing box.

[Scott Denlinger <sbd@u.arizona.edu>]

Hi all,

I'm running Debian testing, and my processor recently died. I used this as an
opportunity to upgrade my processor and system board, and now I need to figure
out how to use my old hard drives, which contain a perfectly functional Debian
testing system, with my new board and processor. Basically, my question is
whether I can use my current partititions and data, and just compile a new
kernel to match my new system's hardware configuration. The system board,
processor, and several peripherals no longer match exactly, so I definitely
need a new kernel.

I thought I might be able to boot into something like Knoppix, let Knoppix tell
me what *it's* using for modules, then use that info. to compile my new kernel,
but I'm not sure how I can do that from Knoppix, and I've not come across
anything on the web which describes how this would work. Can I recompile a
kernel just by mounting the root and boot partitions Knoppix recognizes and
then compile a new kernel using Knoppix's sudo? Would anything I compile in this
scenario boot properly when I'm done and no longer want to boot Knoppix?

Or, are there some basic parameters I can pass on the command line as my OLD
kernel (custom 2.6.4) starts to boot (I use LILO) that would drop me into a
basic single user shell from which I could recompile? I would have to pass in
enough info. to get it to deal with my new Pentium 4 processor--the old one was
a K7 Athlon.

The worst-case scenario is that I could just wipe out my current disk
configuration and reinstall completely, since I've got my critical data backed
up, but I'm intrigued by the challenge of getting a new kernel to work with the
setup I have.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Scott Denlinger