Topic: Transfer to new hardware?

[paulmancan2]

I am pretty embarassed asking this. While I have accomplished a lot with SME, I have never really learned the basics/foundations of linux.

What I am wandering is what happens if you try to move an installation to different hardware?

My guess is that during install there is a one time hardware detection and the kernel gets compiled based on whats found therefore transfering to different hardware is not a good idea. Am I correct here? I am guessing that one might be able to transfer to similar hardware and that that might be a bit more forgiving than trying the same thing on Windows.

Thanks!

[MSmith]

I've had good luck by cloning the hard drive over then running an "upgrade" install of the same version from CD over the cloned install.

[paulmancan2]

Thanks... I did you have any/many extra contribs or custom template fragments? Wander how it handles those...

I'm surprised no-one else has replied. I'd still like to know if an install detects and makes specific hardware (kernel?) settings/compiles with linux in general or if there is (seems like it) some hardware detection at every start up...

[mrjhb3]

I am about to move an installation to new hardware.  I am going to have 2 good backups, then instal 6.01-01, maybe 6.5RC1, then restore my data to the new server.  That is the way I would recommend doing it.  On a restore, you don't actually restore every file that was backed up, just the data.  

JB

[jumba]

If you're using your old server as a PDC things could turn out to be slightly more complicated

I've had some not-so-nice experiences trying to do this, it seems that the machine accounts on SME doesn't work correctly on the new server.
If you create a new machine account on the new server (still same domain name) a new local profile is created on the XP client and the user doesn't have access to his old local profile anymore...

If someone out there KNOWS a good way of transfering an old SME PDC into a new machine, - please share your secrets with the rest of us

[raem]

jumba

> If someone out there KNOWS a good way of transfering an old SME PDC into a new machine...

Use Backup and restore. This will transfer all the configuration & data including machine accounts etc etc.
You can use tape backup if you have one
or
Backup to desktop, but if the resultant backup file is bigger than 2Gb,
then
use the Backup to workstation contrib from dmay & split the file into less than 2Gb size chunks.

After restore, then reinstall any contribs you had previously installed.

Backup and restore will also work OK when moving from a single drive to a 2 drive software RAID1 array.

[jumba]

RayMitchell:

Thanks for your answer!

I assume yoy're talking from real experience, - if so your information is in fact VERY useful.

The way we tried to solve the problem was to tar down all data from the old server and expanding it up into the new machine, - as I already said it didn't work out very well

[bjennings]

Someone had a mondoarchive/mondobackup how to somewhere.  I've used it before to transfer from one computer to another.  Works really slick.

[m]

What I am wandering is what happens if you try to move an installation to different hardware?

Moving to a new hardware is pretty easy and requires only a "few" steps. This is the way I a usually do it:

1) set up SME on the new hardware in server only mode, choose an IP in the same net, don't care about all other settings
2) stop all services on the old server that may modifiy data, like smb, httpd, mysqld, crond, qmaild, smtpfront-qmail
3) login in as superuser root into the new SME
4) execute these commands (which actually is a backup+restore in a single step)
rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids  --rsh=/usr/bin/ssh OLD_SERVER_IP:/home/e-smith/ /home/e-smith/
rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids  --rsh=/usr/bin/ssh OLD_SERVER_IP:/root/ /root/
rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids  --rsh=/usr/bin/ssh OLD_SERVER_IP:/etc/e-smith/templates-custom/ /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/
rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids  --rsh=/usr/bin/ssh OLD_SERVER_IP:/etc/e-smith/templates-user-custom/ /etc/e-smith/templates-user-custom/
rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids  --rsh=/usr/bin/ssh OLD_SERVER_IP:/etc/ssh/ /etc/ssh/

rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids  --rsh=/usr/bin/ssh OLD_SERVER_IP:/etc/passwd /etc/passwd
rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids  --rsh=/usr/bin/ssh OLD_SERVER_IP:/etc/shadow /etc/shadow
rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids  --rsh=/usr/bin/ssh OLD_SERVER_IP:/etc/group /etc/group
rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids  --rsh=/usr/bin/ssh OLD_SERVER_IP:/etc/gshadow /etc/gshadow
rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids  --rsh=/usr/bin/ssh OLD_SERVER_IP:/etc/samba/secrets.tdb /etc/samba/secrets.tdb
rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids  --rsh=/usr/bin/ssh OLD_SERVER_IP:/etc/samba/smbpasswd /etc/samba/smbpasswd
rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids  --rsh=/usr/bin/ssh OLD_SERVER_IP:/etc/smbpasswd /etc/smbpasswd
4) install all contribs on the new server you have installed on the old one
5) do a su admin and run "configure this server". You need to select  the drivers for the new NICs
6) now shut down the old server
7) reboot the new server. You are done.

[paulmancan2]

Very cool mweinber thanks much!

[azche24]

Hi,

I just did that. Moved my home-server from old P II/350 to nice P III/1.13; after several ugly disappointments with other methods i used monobackup for that.

The trick was to put the resulting ISOs directly to a connected workstation onto a samba-share. This is achieved by a little script on the server like this:

#!/bin/sh

#############################################################################
#
# This does a Backup using Mondo

# May 16, 2005: Initial Version
#
#############################################################################

clear

mount //WORKSTATION/backup  /mnt/mondo -o username=admin,password=PASS -t smbfs
mondoarchive -Oi -s700m -E "/mnt/mondo /var/spool/squid /opt/windows/cache" -d /mnt/mondo -F
umount /mnt/mondo

cd /root

echo "Backup complete."

Burned the ISOs on the local workstation. Put it into the new server. Did manual restore (not NUKE) and corrected the partition table to - 2 MB.

Disconnected old SERVER. Booted new server an ran admin-configure from the shell_prompt once. That's it.

Mondo is just coooool!

But watch out:

* mondo did not work with special configurations  (SCSI-Controller, RAID in HW oder SW)
* mondo is terribly slow on weak CPUs. My final backup lasted about 4 hours. Restore was about 30 Minutes.
* you MUST exclude the /var/spool/squid directories. Otherwise restore breaks. Don't know why.
* the wonderful mondo contrib here is somehow outdated. Version Number is 1.67 compared to 2.1x on the mondo website. But it works and should be integrated into SME 7.0 as soon as possible.