Getting new hardware - can I just move the disk?

[Bo Berglund]

On Sun, 10 Oct 2021 10:05:49 +0200, Ralf Mardorf via ubuntu-users
<ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>you can move the old drive to the new computer. If you have anything
>else to do depends on your Ubuntu configuration and the new hardware.

Good to hear,
I had in mind to image the whole existing drive over to the new machine's SSD
drive since they are of equal size and it is less than 50% full (mostly videos).
Of course if that works then I will have to do the 'do-release-upgrade' to get
to 20.04 LTS afterwards.

>BIOS vs UEFI

This might be a problem, the current machine was most likely built before UEFI
was invented so baybe Ubuntu cannot boot from this disk if the new Lenovo only
uses UEFI?

>
>drive order sda, sdb might change
>
>systemd might or might not stay with network device names

This is a machine that was originally installed with Ubuntu 16.04 and
release-upgraded to 18.04 some years back, it still uses the traditional names
eth0, lo, tun0, tun1 if viewed with ifconfig, which is also available...

>drivers might or might not automatically get loaded or
>automatically be available at all

I guess you mean hardware drivers? If that is the case will the system just hang
on boot? Or will it come up so it can then check for drivers on-line?
My 18.04 installation is fully up-to-date at least.

>Things like the above mentioned might or might not be relevant at all.
>
>For example, do you use an xorg.conf at all?

xorg.conf suggests that you are using a system with a desktop, mine is a
*server* with only command line access, no desktop available. So I guess this
does not affect me? Possibly making things simpler?

>Do you use drive names such as sda, sdb at all?

Well, I have this in /etc/fstab so I guess it is moved to use UID-strings
instead of drive names:

# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=ec0e8708-8a6a-4bbf-93ba-0a09b1e2ddc1 /               ext4
errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=a77b40db-2377-4d25-b304-8d233664d1ca none            swap    sw
0       0

And checking with df shows sda in use
(I have removed lines showing external mounts):

$ df -h
Filesystem              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev                    839M     0  839M   0% /dev
tmpfs                   175M   11M  164M   6% /run
/dev/sda1               457G  187G  247G  44% /
tmpfs                   871M     0  871M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                   5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs                   871M     0  871M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/loop0              100M  100M     0 100% /snap/core/11743
/dev/loop1              100M  100M     0 100% /snap/core/11606
tmpfs                   175M     0  175M   0% /run/user/1000

The main drive is 457GB and the new hardware has an SSD, 500GB in size.

>I for example tend to access drives by labels and use scripts that work
>around systemd network device naming issues, but I'm using a xorg.conf
>with dedicated settings. If I migrate to new hardware I likely need to
>fix xorg.conf, but there's unlikely anything else that needs a fix.


>As always, make a backup first, since accidents happen easily.

If I mirror the existing drive onto the new machine's SSD, then the original
will stay where it is. But then the UUID labels in FSTAB probably need to be
changed before I can boot on the new system, right?

BTW:
What is the "best/easiest" way to make a clone of the existing drive onto the
new SSD drive? I would not necessarily need to transfer all of the video files
at this stage. They make up the bulk of used space (like 150G or so).

I have seen suggestions to boot the system to an USB Ubuntu trial system and
then use tools like GParted or similar to manage the disks.

I then would have to find a monitor that can be used of course.
The old eMachine system is so old that it only has a VGA monitor connector...
The new only HDMI.

And my spare seldom used monitor has VGA and DVI only...


-- 
Bo Berglund
Developer in Sweden