Presently I am running OpenSUSE 12.2 64-bits KDE with all the latest patches. I am considering doing a motherboard upgrade while
everything else remains the same. Ideally that means I can keep running the OS without installing. A quick Google on the topic says
that it worked perfectly for some and killed the system for others… However my question is about 12.2 64-bit…
Can OpenSUSE 12.2 64-bits handle a change of motherboard?
Is there anything I can do to the system to improve the odds of success? …and recovery in the case of minor issue? I will of course
have a full backup of all my data but I really don’t want to go through restoring it and even worse, re-installing everything.
My system uses on-board Gigabit Ethernet, on-board sound, plus USB 2.0 and SATA II. The new motherboard will change the chipset
and move to SATA III and USB 3.0. My graphics card will remain the same ATI HD 4650 PCIe 2.0 add-on board.
My fstab lists disks using a long ID which should remain the same, right? For example:
I can only report success stories. My server/workstation is on the fourth motherboard in the same case, never had to reinstall, install extra drivers or whatever. The only thing needing reconfiguration was the network card (I’ve always used motherboards with integrated networkcard, no integrated GPU).
Wrong. The installation installs the linux kernel, which contains the hardware drivers. Linux is not Windows. Definitely not. Even the mentioned networking issue: the configuration is saved for a device, so if one replaces the device, the new device has to be configured.
A quite recent experience is found here in my blog, no issues since I wrote this : openSUSE and a depressed server… - Blogs - openSUSE Forums
That sounds great and reflects my situation: No on-board GPU and on-board Network.
Now I was lucky enough that my network card was auto-configured during the installation of OpenSUSE, so I have not
seen what it takes to configure a network card. Is there any way to trigger the automatic config once the MB is changed?
Or maybe just migrate the config? …considering the Network wont change. I only expect the MAC address to be different.
Broadly, yes, but I am trying to avoid that. Despite the modern miracle of system installations and package-based
software installation, it still takes a long time to get a system running and really I would better not do it until I have
to. Actually I did it recently with 12.1 and 12.2 was an upgrade over it. It took days to get all the apps on and fully
configured (including accounts, servers, configs, plus non-packaged apps).
When it’s needed I’ll delay it the most I can again then do it I’ve done H/W upgrades before to older systems
but this is the first time I am changing a MB without changing everything else.
>
> ratzi;2505001 Wrote:
>> Hi,
>> Doing a backup of all of your data, and doing a fresh install
>> afterwards
>> would be simple and would ensure that the system runs.
>>
>> Right?
>>
>
> Broadly, yes, but I am trying to avoid that. Despite the modern
> miracle of system installations and package-based
> software installation, it still takes a long time to get a system
> running and really I would better not do it until I have
> to. Actually I did it recently with 12.1 and 12.2 was an upgrade over
> it. It took days to get all the apps on and fully
> configured (including accounts, servers, configs, plus non-packaged
> apps).
>
> When it’s needed I’ll delay it the most I can again then do it I’ve
> done H/W upgrades before to older systems
> but this is the first time I am changing a MB without changing
> everything else.
>
>
Could you please keep your progress posted on this. I am thinking of
upgrading my Intel motherboad and would also like to keep the disks,
memory etc. I would also upgrade the processor from dual core to quad
core. Sound and network are internal to the board, Graphics is a nvidia
card that has never given me any problem with the nvidia drivers.
There is nothing to save here,
if you want to have a reliable system.
No one expects that a system would run reliably from a hard disk
the software on which stems from an installation on an old PC
and which is now plugged to a new core i7 or recent AMD system.
But that’s just what you seem to ask for.
Try to do so if you like.
But, I myself, always preferred to have a reliable system,
because at the end of the day that saves me much time.
Such a system results from a fresh install, whenever new hardware is installed
(especially a motherboard with all its components).
Before trying to answer your question, I have to ask: is an openSUSE install that painful? Sure, there are some idiosyncracies, but I’d be surprised if you can’t have a very functional system within an hour (assuming a decent internet connection). Do you have so many different programs from remote sources installed that the downtime associated a reinstall would so much greater compared to the time it takes to change the motherboard, CPU, memory especially if your aim is to improve the odds of success?
But if reinstallation is really an issue for you, there’s an obvious path for you. Change the motherboard and see what happens. If it there are issues, you can always do a parallel install of openSUSE (since you appear to have a number of hard drive options) on a 10GB partition. And surely changing your /etc/fstab entries is not a huge pain? With YaST, you don’t even have to do it manually!
An advantage of a parallel install is that if there any issues, you’ll have a fresh working openSUSE 12.2 version that you can compare to your existing install. I admit I got this idea from an openSUSE webpage on how best to update/upgrade an openSUSE version (credits to its author `Carlos’), but clearly this is a very efficient and safe way to proceed.
You got exactly why I am trying to do this and, to be clear, I am ONLY changing the motherboard, everything else will be EXACTLY the same.
Sure, it takes a few hours to have a working system but it actually takes much longer, at least a few days to have a complete system from which I can work with.
A non-working system means no work being done!
It’s been less than 2 or 3 months since I went through that pain for the 12.2 install. Much of the software I use does come from repos and I am very grateful for that!
There are some that do not and a large number that need to be configured tediously to get them to work. When it is a big change, I do take the time which is why
I am asking. The probably of success depends how the OS is implemented. With dynamic loading an install with a different MB could be 100% identical for all I
know and it would be a waste of time to go through a clean reinstall!
Would you reinstall your system if you got a new DVD burner? Probably not.
Depending on how the OS installs itself, there are things that do not influence
the install. I have done many changes in H/W over the years on other systems
but this one is fairly new (installed 2 -3 months ago) and I will be changing only
one component which happens to be the MB. On Windows, that would kill the
system I know. Since I never did that with OpenSUSE I am asking. Right now,
there seems to be some fear but no one knows for sure. Looks like the MB will
arrive next week and I’ll give it a try. If it does not work, the old MB goes back
in and I’ll schedule a few days of reinstallation while there is no pressing work
on my plate. I’ll have backups but I doubt there is much risk in trying.
I’m not sure that’s a fair analogy in comparison to changing a motherboard. For example, changing your motherboard can easily result in differences in your BIOS settings that may preclude even reaching the GRUB menu without manual tweaks, especially if you have more than one hard drive. There are many more variables associated with changing with motherboard compared to installation of a DVD burner.
It might be helpful to know why you found it painful. Boring, I can identify with :). The openSUSE forum however is a resource with very knowledgeable people (far much more than myself) who might be able to help you making the experience less painful. If you want to keep up to date with each openSUSE version (e.g 12.1 ->12.2 -> 12.3), it would be well worth the investment of energy in making the installation experience a breeze.
If you consistently use the same software within the repos, it might be worth writing a script (with `zypper’ entries) that automatically installs the necessary packages for you. This is Linux: you don’t need to do everything using mouse-clicks.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by configuration changes. Many of the configuration files are stored in the /home/ and if keep a separate /home/ partition, then you don’t need to format it when you perform a reinstall. I use a script that automatically copies/backs up my critical configuration files (my .vimrc for example is highly customised!) so that I can always restore important components of /home/ if I choose to format it.
On Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:21:07 GMT, upscope <upscope@nwi.net> wrote:
>idanan wrote:
>
>>
>> ratzi;2505001 Wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> Doing a backup of all of your data, and doing a fresh install
>>> afterwards
>>> would be simple and would ensure that the system runs.
>>>
>>> Right?
>>>
>>
>> Broadly, yes, but I am trying to avoid that. Despite the modern
>> miracle of system installations and package-based
>> software installation, it still takes a long time to get a system
>> running and really I would better not do it until I have
>> to. Actually I did it recently with 12.1 and 12.2 was an upgrade over
>> it. It took days to get all the apps on and fully
>> configured (including accounts, servers, configs, plus non-packaged
>> apps).
>>
>> When it’s needed I’ll delay it the most I can again then do it I’ve
>> done H/W upgrades before to older systems
>> but this is the first time I am changing a MB without changing
>> everything else.
>>
>>
>Could you please keep your progress posted on this. I am thinking of
>upgrading my Intel motherboad and would also like to keep the disks,
>memory etc. I would also upgrade the processor from dual core to quad
>core. Sound and network are internal to the board, Graphics is a nvidia
>card that has never given me any problem with the nvidia drivers.
>
>Thanks
> Russ
I did something like this once. The MB was the primary change, of course
memory and CPU changed, the old stuff just wasn’t compatible. OpenSuse
came back nicely, XP was on the same dual boot machine not such a good
experience. It is expected to have the original install media until
network is working again.
Actually I dont see any issue as linux is preetty good with this sort of thing.
When I swapped out my old system for my new linux had zero to no issues detecting my newer hardware.
But on the other hand -
to “only” exchange the motherboard
for modern systems means to replace almost everything relevant:
the processor, the network, the sound, USB (v2 or v3), perhaps FireWire,
etc. etc.,
along with the onboard graphics or otherwise as well probably the graphics card.
The only key components that won’t be exchanged
will be the harddisk and the DVD drive.
OK, it could perhaps work, as long as no special NVIDIA or AMD graphics drivers
are needed afterwards.
A backup of all data before any change would anyway still be a good idea.
Done! This morning, I changed the motherboard. It took less than an hour to unscrew everything and put everything back together. The casing is still open just in case I had plugged one of the cables wrong.
Actually I did. Not actually wrong but wrong for my installation. The old motherboard had SATA 1 to 6 ports while the new one had SATA 0 to 5. I simply assumed at it was offset by one and plugged things in the same order, so that my boot disk previously on SATA 1 was plugged into SATA 0. This made the MB attempt to boot the wrong disk, so I flipped SATA 0 and SATA 1 and the system booted in OpenSUSE 12.2!
Once booted there was no network access at all. To fix this, I went into Yast and selected Network Settings. This showed two cards with one shown as not configured. This is the new controller of the MB which has obviously a new MAC address. To fix the issue, I deleted the OTHER card and then configured the new one. On my network that simply meant enabling DHCP and rebooting. I am sure there is a way to do it without a reboot but I had no network to look up a solution!
The system will be used normally today and I’ll report back IF anything stopped working. I’ll also be trying a USB 3.0 device soon since my old MB only had USB 2.0. The SSDs have dealt with the SATA 1 to SATA III change without a problem, which is the only other specification that changed.
Good luck to everyone else who tries this!
I’ve this a lot of times. Not only changing a motherboard but changing the entire system. Yo get a HD with Opensuse, yo plug it into a new system, switch the system on and… running
I’ve done H/W upgrades before to older systems
I’ve