Re: device discovery question before doing a motherboard upgrade.
On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 21:36:56 +0000
Floris Bruynooghe <fb102@soton.ac.uk> wrote:
> [ Cc'd since I don't know if you're subscribed to the list, no
> Mail-Followup-To: header ]
>
> On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 02:02:57PM -0600, water modem wrote:
> > I have given up searching the Debian sites and Google and usenet groups
> > for the answer to a simple question.
>
> This question should really go to debian-user@lists.debian.org...
> Here a short attempt from me to answer it though.
>
> > If I want to upgrade a Sarge 2.6 install to a new motherboard without
> > re-installing Debian....
>
> Good luck, replacing a motherboard is non-trivial and will never be
> "simple" like you state it. ;-)
>
> > What do I run before or after the hardware upgrade to force device
> > discovery to be repeated?
>
> I'm not really up to date with things like discover or whatever they
> are and what they do. But basically it boils down to knowing what
> devices you will be replacing, which chipsets the old and new ones
> are. Then making sure that you kernel can use all of them, either by
> recompiling or by having modules around, making sure they will get
> loaded. Then you can try replacing the motherboard and hope
> everything will come up. Depending on what's integrated in the
> motherboards some devices could be renamed etc, so on your first
> reboot it's a bood idea to boot single user and make sure everyting is
> going to be fine, clean up all mess.
>
> If you're using the stock kernel you probably won't have to do
> anything to the kernel since all drivers are available by modules
> afaik. They still need to be loaded somehow, discover might do this
> for you. You will likely still have the trouble of renamed devices
> etc though.
>
> > I want to do it right without getting in trouble and just can't find any
> > information on the process.
>
> There's many things that can go wrong anywhere along the path. Did I
> mention to take backups? ;-)
>
> > Thanks
>
> Please direct any follup discussion/questions to
> debian-user@lists.debian.org
>
> Regards
> Floris
I'm just guessing here, so please take this 'with a grain of salt'
Some basic modules needed for system boot are contained in the initrd image. IF you get a boot with some errors about missing modules, bla bla, you can try to do a 'dpkg-reconfigure kernel-image...'. This will rebuild your initrd, possibly more compatible with the new hardware. If you can't boot at all, you can still try to boot with a Knoppix disk, mount your root partition (and all other essential partitions if you have your install spread), remount /dev to your root partition, chroot, mount /proc and do a dpkg-reconfigure... to rebuild the initrd. That is IF you are using the stock kernel. With custom kernel it's a totally different story...
Andrei
--
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein)
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