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I have a home file server which was previously running on an Athlon XP cpu (Socket A). The operating system on it is Ubuntu 10.04 (LTS), 32-bit, server-flavor. I believe the motherboard has died and am looking for something fairly modern as a replacement, like a Core i3 or Athlon II. If I get 64-bit hardware, will I be able to just plug in the new mobo, cpu, and ram into the machine and boot it up? Would there be other problems with such a large jump in motherboard technology?

If it is possible, I realize that I won't be able to use any of the 64-bit advantages without installing a 64-bit OS. It would just be nice to go in and save configuration files and properly prep for an OS upgrade, since this is an unscheduled hardware upgrade.

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Why not just backup all the stuff BEFORE the hardware upgrade, and then just install the new OS? –  Simon Sheehan Oct 10 '11 at 21:48
It doesn't boot as is. I CAN deal with not being able to boot it first, but it'll be a big pain to use my other computer to get information out and I'm not sure how effective it'll be. TBH, I'm looking to see if the obvious easy way out is valid or not (before buying hardware or fiddling with the other computer). –  Jay Sheridan Oct 10 '11 at 21:54
Which version of Ubuntu did you actually use? It could be old enough not to work at all on a new computer... –  AndrejaKo Oct 10 '11 at 22:02
At the very least, you are looking at a new kernel since they use different ACPI. –  surfasb Oct 10 '11 at 22:05
@surfasb, how is the Linux kernel dependent on "different ACPI"? –  grawity Oct 10 '11 at 22:34

2 Answers 2

up vote 4 down vote accepted

The answer is "it depends". Provided your LTS was kept up to date, it is possible the kernel will work and has all the necessary modules to boot up the new hardware. That is is 64bit isn't all that important.

You may as well give it a try. Consider that if it doesn't work, it is the same outcome as not trying - you'll need to install a new OS, and rebuild the services from the data you have on the disk. Depending on what disk setup you have, I would install the new OS on a new disk so you can keep everything intact and migrate the configuration files over as needed.

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In my case, it did boot right back up. For the benefit of others reading this: I moved up to an Athlon II X2. The new 8G ram was recognized. All drives worked. However, It didn't recognize the network port, so there may be other underlying problems I haven't found yet. –  Jay Sheridan Oct 16 '11 at 19:14

What's your time worth?

Buy a new hard drive. Clone the disk from the old server. Keep the original drive as a backup.

Buy a duplicate of your old dead mobo off of ebay, and install it and the new drive. Boot it. Tweak what isn't quite right (minimal as it's identical hardware). Once the new mobo is stable, use the old hard drive as an external drive.

Then at your leisure extract the info (maybe onto the external drive from the above step), do the hardware upgrade (the new mobo you were talking about), install the new OS on yet another new drive, then put the data back.

Using the above procedure you have minimal downtime now, and an at-your-leisure upgrade path later.

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