[Gllug] Reliable Remote installing to a desktop.

[John Hearns]

On 23 August 2010 16:47, James Courtier-Dutton <james.dutton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been given the task to upgrading a remote desktop from gentoo to ubuntu.
> What options are available to do this?

Get the hardware information from the remote system - lsusb, lspci,
X11 configuration,
lsmod and ifconfig -a
Get the udev/rules.d directory while you're at it.

Get a similar type of harddrive to the target system (ie PATA, SATA,
SAS whatever - ie one which will physically work).
Even better, try to get the same type of motherboard at your home site.
Install.
If you have sufficient network bandwidth, rsync across the /home
partition (optional step)
Adjust modules list at boot time to encompass every hard drive
controller you can think of - including the one on the target system!
mkinitrd
Erase any udev rules which refer to the MAC addresses on your home system.


Ship the drive, and have someone install it in the case.
If you get the boot order right, you can boot off the new drive, yet
have the old drive still on the system as (say) /dev/sdb
mount /dev/sdb<home partition> as /home  or mount and rsync /home
(optional step)
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