So I finally got myself a new PC to replace the ubuntu server. The new box is a Acer Revo R3700 from www.ebuyer.com which was £200, very cheap for a brand new box, and it comes with HDMI out. In keeping with my naming policy for devices it will be called ‘middenface’.

Anyway the plan is to use remastersys to create a live cd from the old ubuntu server installation and then write that to the new box. Instructions about this come from here deb http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/ubuntu.html

More later as I get on with it, just installing remastersys so that I can prepare the bootable usb stick from the ISO it makes.

The other thing I need to do is work out how to swap the hard disk in the new machine to upgrade it from 200Gb to 500Gb. This youtube video shows you how to get the box open. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUo8RSue5eE I managed to get this done, although I ended up using the short end of a bendy plastic ruler rather than a credit card to get the cover off. Once in it was very straightforward to get the disk changed (although more screws than I would have expected – but the video shows you exactly how to do it).

All I’m waiting for now is the old machine to finish creating the remastersys iso file so that i can clone it onto the new box. Once it has done that I’ll probably run a liveCD (on the USB stick) on the new box, mount the / partition on the old box as an NFS share and then copy the contents onto the new box. After that a reboot and and apt-get update and an upgrade should be all that is required to get going, not to mention changing the hostname.

Anyway, all that is for tomorrow. The PIII 800MHz processor on the old machine is taking a long time to do the backup.

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