'moving' ubuntu to new laptop...

[Tom Marshall]

> I just partimaged the partitions originaly set up by IBM, and I want to
> have just one big ext3 partition. When I do mkfs.ext3, may I just copy
> the files from the old laptop to the new laptop (old laptop also had
> only one partition, and new laptop has 20 Gigs more of the hard disk
> space)?

Yes, you may copy the install between machines using tar.  This works quite
well when you have both drives connected to the same machine:

  # cd /; tar cvf - bin boot dev ... var | (cd /mnt/otherdrive; tar xf -)

Note that there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

  Don't include lost+found in the tar command.

  Don't include mnt in the tar command (recursion!)

  You will need to run the boot installer (grub, lilo).  With lilo, this is
  usually easiest done by booting with a resuce CD.

With a pair of laptops, you may not be able to connect both drives to the
same machine.  If not, you will need to boot the target machine and get sshd
running.  Then you can do something similar:

  # cd /; tar cvf - bin boot dev ... var | ssh otherbox "cd /; tar xf -"

Use ethernet if you can: the faster the network connection, the better.

-- 
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.
        -- William James