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Legacy Forums => General Discussion (Legacy) => Topic started by: dilligaf on August 17, 2004, 04:58:51 PM

Title: Changing a Motherboard
Post by: dilligaf on August 17, 2004, 04:58:51 PM: Hi,
SME Server 6.01 set up on an MSI K7T266 Pro2.
Athlon +2000 CPU, 1GB Kingston Ram.
The CAP's on the mainboard are starting to swell / leak.
If we replace with a board that uses KT266A chipset will we still have to rebuild?
We would still use all other periphreals, CPU, RAM, NICS, Video card etc.
Thanks,
Title: Changing a Motherboard
Post by: arnoldob on August 17, 2004, 05:40:33 PM: I moved from a PII 350 on a Abit BH6 (440BX Intel chipset) to a MSI KM4M Athlon 2000+ (Via KM400 chipset). I put the same HDD in the new box (AFTER MAKING A FRESH BACKUP). All I did after that was run through the "Configure this Server" option in the Server Console to pick the new onboard NIC. Everything seems happy for the last few months.

CAUTION TRY AY YOUR OWN RISK AND HAVE A RECENT BACKUP!!!!

I figured the worst outcome would be a fresh install and restore. So I had nothing to lose but a few minutes to see if it would work. Without all the GUI video driver issues to deal with it went smoothly. Your mileage may vary!
Title: Changing a Motherboard
Post by: dilligaf on August 17, 2004, 06:13:46 PM: I am surprised it even booted up going from one platform to the other. (Intel to AMD)
Seemed I had tried that one time before without success.
Will be interesting to hear other users comments.
Title: Changing a Motherboard
Post by: NickR on August 17, 2004, 09:49:46 PM: Quote from: "dilligaf"
I am surprised it even booted up going from one platform to the other. (Intel to AMD)
Seemed I had tried that one time before without success.
Will be interesting to hear other users comments.

The kernel is built for Intel & the AMD chips emulate Intel just fine. Apart from the IPSEC .rpm, AFAIK, all rpm's are built as i386 or noarch. IME, moving from Intel to AMD will always just work.
Title: Changing a Motherboard
Post by: dilligaf on August 18, 2004, 02:51:07 PM: My Mileage varied badly,
Moved from MSI KT266 W/Athlon +2000 to Intel board w/2.8GHZ.
Starts to boot, goes just past contribs splash screen,
then Loading SMEServer-up
then Uncompressing Linux, OK booting the kernel and just sits there.
Any ideas?
Title: Changing a Motherboard
Post by: raem on August 18, 2004, 03:41:33 PM: Run the install CD and select upgrade
Title: Changing a Motherboard
Post by: dilligaf on August 18, 2004, 09:31:58 PM: Hi Ray,
I was hopefull when I saw your post.
I did just moments ago try exactly that (select upgrade) it completed successfully.
However I have the same thing on reboot:
Starts to boot, goes just past contribs splash screen,
then Loading SMEServer-up
then Uncompressing Linux, OK booting the kernel and just sits there still.
I know the new hardware is good, it installs win 2003 server no trouble, and I know the drive is good.
Title: Changing a Motherboard
Post by: raem on August 19, 2004, 07:35:03 AM: Try the fix outlined in this HOWTO, it may be applicable to your situation

http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/rmitchell/smeserver/howto/Cloning%20drive%20with%20Ghost%20lilo.conf%20fix%20HOWTO%20for%20sme%20server.htm
Title: Changing a Motherboard
Post by: dilligaf on August 19, 2004, 10:37:43 PM: No go on that either.
I actually used knoppix to assure the lilo.conf has default=Mitel-SME-up.
The drives are not ghosted.
Title: Changing a Motherboard
Post by: Boris on August 20, 2004, 09:51:46 AM: Quote from: "dilligaf"
No go on that either.
I actually used knoppix to assure the lilo.conf has default=Mitel-SME-up.

Until you run lilo -v command, lilo.conf settings are not applied to MBR
Title: Changing a Motherboard
Post by: dilligaf on August 24, 2004, 07:46:36 PM: Hi,
I have taken the working drive out of the failing server.
I have connected the hard drive to the primary IDE connector on the new server ,exactly as it was on the old.
I boot to the Knoppix cd, and on the Knoppix desktop, I right click Hard Disk Partition hda1 and hda3 and take properties on both and assure they are not read only. Then I mount the drives.
Then in Midnight Commander from the knoppix cd, I cd into /mnt/hda3/etc and type lilo -v.
I get Unrecognized Token "! Please edit /etc/lilo.conf before running lilo "! at or above line 20 in file "/etc/lilo.conf"
If there is any furter recommendations to try that would be great.
Thanks,
Title: Changing a Motherboard
Post by: Boris on August 24, 2004, 08:19:54 PM: If you mount drive on another system (knoppix) you need one more step chroot before you run lilo -v
chroot /mnt/hda3/etc
lilo -v
Title: Changing a Motherboard
Post by: dilligaf on August 24, 2004, 10:03:33 PM: Hi Boris,
Drive is mounted on Knoppix, it sees it as hda3.
What I did from midnight commander (as well as the bash shell) is typed in:
chroot /mnt/hda3/etc
It returns, no such file or directory.
Yet when I cd /mnt/hda3/etc and list the contents etc, all is there.
Thanks,
Title: Changing a Motherboard
Post by: dilligaf on August 24, 2004, 10:41:53 PM: I just wanted to confirm as per the first post, that the original problem was not a failed or ghosted hd.
It is a planned move from a failing mb to a new one, using all the same parts except the actual mb.
Thanks,
Title: Success (staying on AMD platform)
Post by: dilligaf on August 26, 2004, 04:36:46 PM: I just wanted to summarize my experience with this.
I had a good working system with SME Server 6.01 set up on an MSI K7T266 Pro2 Motherboard, Athlon +2000 CPU, 1GB Kingston Ram.
The capacitors on this board were leaking so I wanted to move to Intel Board/processor. All other periphreals would remain the same, NICS, RAM, Video, drives etc.
Tried all of the recommendations in the thread to make this work and it would not. So, I tracked down another board (ASUS A7V8X-X) that would carry the original AMD processor and powered it up, and never had to change a thing.
The Intel stuff we were trying to use definately works, have since reloaded NT 2003 Server.
Thanks for the suggestions etc, but IME if you have a good working system and the board fails my experience was successfull by retaining the AMD architecture.
Dan