On Sunday 17 November 2002 21:58, Michael L. Hallsted wrote:

hello all,

i have SuSE v8.1 personal installed.

i'm just curious about how a current installation handles new hardware.

The true answer is, of course, "it depends", but for the most part it actually does fairly well -- I'll take a shot at throwing some answers your way...

can i pull out a video card, stick a new one in, and my current installation of SuSE would be ok with that and allow me to configure the new Xserver needed?

if the old and new cards are of "recent vintage", there is a very good chance everything will work fine -- as of, say, the last year or two, there are really only two major manufactures of video chips: nvidia and ati [everything else is down in the noise level] somewhat like selecting "standard VGA" under windows, the "xsvga" driver (for version 3 of X-windows) was becoming the catch-all driver; under version 4, I'm not sure if it is as universal [but I think it is]. Basically, if you are upgrading your card within the same line, the same driver will be used If your old video card is much older [or specialized] your current XF86config file probably notes a specific driver, which probably won't be compatable with the new card. If that's the case, usually what will happen is that X will fail to start [with an appropriately cryptic error message ;) ] and leave you at a command-line prompt. one thing that WILL create a headache is switching monitors, but again, if both monitors are "recent", this may not actually cause any problems. The root of this "problem", however, is resolution and frequencies -- windows operates in a narrow margin here, while X lets you shoot yourself in the foot (X gives you complete control over what you can tell the video card to produce, which *may* damage your monitor if the frequency involved is too far out of range. Microsoft limited windows graphical modes to a few standard rates and *strongly* encouraged video driver writers to "stick with safe settings" to avoid this problem) Again, this is less of an issue with the latest hardware because X will query the attached monitor, and if the monitor tells X it can't do 1280x1024, X won't enable that resolution. If it can't find any "workable" resoultions, it quits out... As a "fail safe" way of doing this, however, you can explicitly set your system to start at run level -3- prior to shutting down to switch video cards [or type "linux 3" at the boot prompt -- see the lilo/grub documentation] This puts your system into a text-only mode that will let you run the appropriate auto-detect-and-configure routines after you switch cards.

can i yank out an old motherboard and put a new one in using the same processor and memory, but a different chipset, and my current installation of SuSE would be ok with that and not cough up hairballs?

Unless you've explicitly tailored your kernel for your particular motherboard/chipset/pci-bus/bridge/whatever, there shouldn't be a problem. If you HAVE configured your kernel, well, you probably know what you're doing... :) The reason for this is that most distrubutors create what I call a "kitchen sink" kernel -- everything is either compiled in or set as a loadable module -- they do this because, as a distributor, they have no idea of the actual hardware you intend to install upon, so they throw everything at it [and by virtue of the "loadable module" system, simply ignore those modules that aren't needed -- sure, it wastes disk space, but disks are cheap...] The only cases where I see this failing are: 1) your "new" motherboard is actually an ancient 386/486: modern kernels are often compiled for 586 or better, meaning that while they are still pentium/x86 based kernels, they'll try to execute instructions that don't exist on the older processor [and most likely hang or panic] 2) your "new" motherboard is a completely different architecture -- i.e., going from x86 to pa-risc -- totally different machine instructions, boot loaders, etc. Of course, you *did* say "same processor & memory", so you shouldn't have either of these problems...

are floppy drives and cdroms so generic now-a-days that they are interchangable in a current installation of SuSE? [ i am assuming yes on this one ] [ but 3rd party confirmation is always nice ]

I would think so, and for that matter, serial ports & parallel ports would fall under this "generic" classification -- what is connected to the serial/parallel port, however, is another matter :)

could i buy a new computer system, minus the hard drive, take my current hard drive with SuSE on it out of my older computer system, stick it in my new system, and expect SuSE to be ok with it?

I've actually done this -- originally, I had two computers set up: my primary "server" running on an older pentium-1 (100mhz) and a newer P-II (266) that I acquired when our company shut down the local office. The P-II was doing "grunt work" of being a firewall for a DSL line. Realizing the imbalance, I shut the systems down one weekend and swapped hard drives -- note also: the "server" was set up in a "raid" configuration. On the new system one of the HD's changed it's "position", (such as going from /devhdc to /dev/hdb) and when I first booted it, the md/lvm software "recognized" the fact that it moved and reconfigured accordingly (though I think I had to fix one or two fstab entries because the CD changed as well...)

or........

is it just better to backup, re-format and re-install anytime i do a major hardware change with SuSE?

Actually, while "windows would do it" [as you mentioned originally], I would be more inclined to do a fresh install of either OS in this case. For windows specifically, I would do this for no other reason than to clear out the "cruft" that accumulates in the windows registry [especially since after a system swap, a good part of that "cruft" will be registry entries pertaining to the old hardware]

are there any basic general guidelines to follow when changing out hardware on a computer with a working linux installation?

my experience with linux is rather limited right now, but if i have some idea what to expect, then i can plan properly for it. and i am rather curious, since these areas don't seem to be talked about much. i am also the "computer guy" for a lot of people and they are starting to ask about linux, and in some of these areas, i don't have any idea what to tell them. especially, since i generally help people roll their own computers.

Well, as you've probably figured out by now, hardware is hardware -- doesn't change much no matter who makes it. Knowing what you would do "under windows" with a given piece of hardware should help you when going to linux

thanks in advance for any input. michael hallsted

can i yank out an old motherboard and put a new one in using the same processor and memory, but a different chipset, and my current installation of SuSE would be ok with that and not cough up hairballs?

...snip....

could i buy a new computer system, minus the hard drive, take my current hard drive with SuSE on it out of my older computer system, stick it in my new system, and expect SuSE to be ok with it?

Here's a little success story for you. I'm also the "techie" for the rest of the family. Once or twice a year I take a two or so weeks off, visit all the family, and fix up their computers while I'm at it. This year I was a way for a little longer, so I decided to take my hard drive along to download my e-mail while I'm at it (my mailbox wouldn't have handled all the messages from this list... :-) I plugged my drive into no less than nine PCs with a wide variety of parts. This was with SuSE 8.0 Pro. Mostly I just edited XF86Config and replaced "nvidia" with "ati" or "sis" or whatever (fortunately I've owned enough video cards to know these), and from there un it took only a couple of clicks in Yast2 to get everything to work proplerly. Best was, when I got back home, Yast2 even managed to ressurect my nvidia setup (which took me days of headaches to get going in the first place). This was really cool. That said, I did use the default kernel (going from a celeron 500 back to a PII (where I had to set the "limit to 33gb jumper on my 40gb disc, otherwise the bios hang, and SuSE still loaded) back to a Pentium and up to Athlons and PIII's), and I did settle for a resolution that I knew all the different monitors would handle. Didn't have one hassle getting internet up and running, downloading e-mail, or anything. Windows 2000 broke by the second machine. Couldn't even get it to boot back on my machine... Hans

or........

is it just better to backup, re-format and re-install anytime i do a major hardware change with SuSE?

are there any basic general guidelines to follow when changing out hardware on a computer with a working linux installation?

my experience with linux is rather limited right now, but if i have some idea what to expect, then i can plan properly for it. and i am rather curious, since these areas don't seem to be talked about much. i am also the "computer guy" for a lot of people and they are starting to ask about linux, and in some of these areas, i don't have any idea what to tell them. especially, since i generally help people roll their own computers.

thanks in advance for any input. michael hallsted

--

Michael Lawrence Hallsted home: mailto:tbhccs@cal.net http://www.hallsted.com/index.html http://www.softcom.net/users/mikey719/index.html work: mailto:webmaster@jfmco.com http://www.jfmco.com/index.html

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