[SLL] Re: Mobo upgrade virgin seeks tips

[Jim Osborn]

On Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at  2:55:17PM -0800, Glenn Stone wrote:
> Jim Osborn wrote:
> >I'm running a highly-updated SuSE 7.3 system, 2.4.23 kernel.  The
> >current kernel, of course, is compiled for the PII; maybe it won't
> >fly in the Sempron?  Should I cross-compile a new kernel before
> >losing the PII mobo? 
> 
> 7.3??  Ummm, methinks it's past time to upgrade, unless you've got
> a Really Good Reason not to.  SUSE 9.2 is current...

SuSE 9.2 just arrived in the mail, but in the spirit of moving one
step at a time, it seemed sensible to leave the current software in
place while changing the board.  If I installed the new hardware, and
tried installing 9.2 into it as its first bootup, and ran into
trouble, I wouldn't know whether it was hardware/BIOS or something in
the new software.  It'd probably be great on the *second* such
upgrade, once I'd been through the process.  But as my one-and-only
computer, I'm included to be cautious. 

Usually it seems to take a few weeks for a new distro to settle down,
at least for me, so I'm reluctant to install 9.2 into the current
system, especially since the disc is near full.  So building up from
new-board-with-7.3, then add additional disc, then install 9.2
seemed the way to go.  Is that unreasonable?

It does mean, assuming I need to cross-compile a 2.4.23 kernel to run
on the new board's AMD Sempron, that I'd need to use the old 2.95.3
compiler to do the job.  Hopefully that'll work.  Or is an AMD
Sempron close enough to a PII to make the question moot? 

> Across the upgrade you're going to need a LOT more room for /.

Yeah, I figured I would.  I thought I'd drop in a modest 18G SCSI
drive, since the jacks are there on the current cable, and then the
SCSI controller would have something to do, with more than one drive:)
I figured I'd add some larger IDE storage later. 

> Personally I would leave your current SCSI boot drive intact,
> install to a new IDE (or SATA) drive, and then you could easily
> copy any config you needed off the old SCSI drive. 

But that wouldn't include any BIOS config info, would it?  I can't
think of any way to read the BIOS settings with Linux running, to get
a machine readable copy.  Or is there a "save settings to readable
file" option in some BIOS configs?  I've never looked, and it's not a
convenient time to reboot just now... :)

> But that's just my approach.. 

Thanks for the thoughts,

Jim