Less exciting than I expected

[mdlbear]

Finally got around to swapping the hard drives on my fileserver, putting the new(ish) 200GB drive in place as the main one. The last step of the process was to copy the root partition over, edit /etc/fstab for the new configuration, install grub on the new drive, and swap cables. Worked perfectly except for one bad edit in fstab.

The things that I blew the last time around were forgetting to mark a partition as bootable on the new drive, and not knowing that you need to use grub-install --recheck.

Along the way I also swapped out the broken video card (green was missing) and pulled the two SCSI drives and the controller.

All-in-all a very smooth transition.

Comments

[kissmyassterisk.livejournal.com]

Do you know how I would go about getting Linux on a Dell laptop?

[mdlbear]

The latest Ubuntu or Debian install disk should work fine. Last time I installed Debian Etch (testing) on a Windows machine (a brand-new Dell desktop about a month ago) it was even able to resize the old Windows partition.

Depending on the age of the laptop, there could be problems with some of the drivers. Ubuntu is a bit more likely to have the latest ones. I've also heard good things about Suse for laptops.

(Let me know if this is too sketchy for you.)

[kissmyassterisk.livejournal.com]

I think I can figure it out...