Hey all,
I’m upgrading from an Asus A8N-SLI running an AMD Athlon (circa 1995) to an Asrock 880G-Extreme with an AMD Phenom processor.
Can I just swap motherboard, processor and ram…or “should” I also plan on a reinstall of Suse 11.3? TIA
The problematic part is the graphic chipset if it is different. I would just replace the hardware, boot in runlevel 3 (console mode, no X), rename /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and finally install (Nvidia or ATI) graphic driver if needed. If you keep the same graphic card, no problem.
I’ve done this several times. The only adaptions necessary were referring to the GFX-card driver, the network card and the audio.
That’s true. If your netcard was/is on board, your network device number is going to be increased by 1. So if it was eth0 before, it’s going to be eth1. It’s harmless but unnecessary. If you want to reset it to eth0 and maybe avoid doing some network configuration again, edit the file /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules after the first boot, delete the entry describing your older nic, and replace eth1 with eth0 in the new entry. Check the MAC address with ifconfig eth1 to make sure this is the right device. Save this file and reboot.
On 22/11/10 22:06, portsample wrote:
>
> Hey all,
> I’m upgrading from an Asus A8N-SLI running an AMD Athlon (circa 1995)
> to an Asrock 880G-Extreme with an AMD Phenom processor.
>
> Can I just swap motherboard, processor and ram…or “should” I also
> plan on a reinstall of Suse 11.3? TIA
>
>
Thanks for saving me time 
I’m about to change motherboards where
everything but the video card is different (from a VIA chipset to an AMD
chipset) - followed by an upgrade to 11.3 (I always dual-boot old and
new for a period of “parallel running” whilst setting up the “look and
feel” as I want - separate /home partitions).
–
PeeGee
@PeeGee
If you’re going to install the ATI proprietary driver, this script might help: Upgrading ATI driver with atiupgrade. Get the latest version at post #8 of that thread, and take a look on post #9, which describes the whole process.
On 24/11/10 12:36, please try again wrote:
>
> @PeeGee
> If you’re going to install the ATI proprietary driver, this script
> might help: ‘Upgrading ATI driver with atiupgrade’
> (http://tinyurl.com/2flypod). Get the latest version at post #8 of that
> thread, and take a look on post #9, which describes the whole process.
>
>
Thanks, I’ve had a quick look and bookmarked the page for a detailed
look at a later date (before the change, obviously ).
The information from just browsing here and the many "how to"s has
helped me on a number of occasions My thanks to all who give their
time freely to help us less knowledgeable.
–
PeeGee
@PeeGee
I agree with please_try_again. In your case I’m not sure why or what you’re upgrading. If you have a separate /home why not fresh install OS 11.3 instead of upgrade? That would take of your chipset just not the ATI proprietary driver (I think).
On 24/11/10 19:36, tararpharazon wrote:
>
> @PeeGee
> I agree with please_try_again. In your case I’m not sure why or what
> you’re upgrading. If you have a separate /home why not fresh install OS
> 11.3 instead of upgrade? That would take of your chipset just not the
> ATI proprietary driver (I think).
>
>
Right, I wasn’t as clear as I could have been, especially the use of
“upgrade” 
I have two “/” and “/home” partition pairs with common /tmp and swap and
I upgrade the system by a fresh install in the partition that contains
the oldest OS version and create a clean(ish) /home; that allows me to
run either version for as long as required to be happy with the way the
new installation is set up and, if necessary, re-install the new version
without affecting normal usage. In addition, the bulk of my data is
referenced by creating a “Documents” link to a common folder - so the
/home partition can be quite small - when the look and feel has been
established and all software installed. Also, each version has “alt-OS”
and “alt-home” mount points to the other partitions. That is why I want
to keep running the current system on the new motherboard.
Complicated? Probably, but it provides a very simple way of testing the
stability of the “upgrade” without affecting day-to-day operations.
–
PeeGee
Then you shouldn’t have a problem with the new system. When you reboot to the old stable system I think udev will find the new hardware and use the correct drivers except for the proprietary ATI drivers.
Another possibility would be to use the same /home partition and change the default base directory to /home/11.2 , /home/11.3, etc, something which can be achieved with the command:
useradd --save-defaults -d /home/11.2
Also see useradd --show-defaults
Then, for each user, have a directory /home/username and link his common files to …/11.3/username/file… But it comes more or less to the same.
On 25/11/10 00:06, tararpharazon wrote:
>
> Then you shouldn’t have a problem with the new system. When you reboot
> to the old stable system I think udev will find the new hardware and use
> the correct drivers except for the proprietary ATI drivers.
>
>
Thanks, tararpharazon and please_try_again - just need to connect the
new motherboard to the PSU outside the case with an old CD drive, then
run memtest86+ and prime for a while each
–
PeeGee