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Michael Mortimore wrote:
On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:09:53 +0100, alex mclennan <alexfido@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:Not all drivers are built into the kernel itself though, a fair few are modules, at least looking at my Ubuntu install they are. I'm assuming the core drivers though for things like hard drive controllers etc are either compiled into the kernel or in the initrd file. In the case of when I upgraded the hard drives on SME Server from IDE to SATA, it wouldn't boot because the drivers for the SATA controller weren't compiled into the kernel, and for some reason not in the initrd either. Luckily I was able to boot up from the IDE drive and add the drivers so they loaded on boot rather than not finding the root partition and causing a kernel panic.a bit off topic but, i checked out a friends laptop who had thought it was no good any more,and had done a fairly good job of destroying the hard drive. as i recall it was an acer,any way i took the hard drive out of my old vaio and put it in to check it,i could not stop laughing as it fired into life showing a big ubuntu screen so i let it run,expecting an explosion any second. to my surprise it went straight in and found the wireless drivers and works great.It's because ubuntu (and alot of other distros) include as many drivers as they can to maximise compatibility. It makes for a bigger kernel and maybe a load of services you don't really need but for alot of people "just works" ranks higher than "is fast".can any one explain why or was i just lucky. alex the not so noob
You can do the same thing with windows (2k and xp at least) if you have the drivers for the new hardware installed. During my 3rd year group project at uni, the computer (supplied by one of the guys in our group) that was controlling our project died on the day of the demonstration. We scrounged from the lab the only computer with 2 serial ports, plugged in the harddrive and it booted up fine and we demonstrated our project. Admittedly, this is rare: possibly a once in a lifetime experience.It's not that rare actually. I used to do this a lot with Windows 2000 & XP when creating a Ghost image for two sets of machines, one with IDE drives, and another with SCSI drives. IIRC the trick was to create the image on the lowest spec machine we could get away with (in this case a P2-300 with 440LX chipset) and then it would work on anything up to a P4 1.5GHz (this was going back to 2002). Although saying that in companies I've worked in over the past couple of years, they tend to RIS a machine so it installs a fresh install of Windows and then all the applications via Active Directory. Guess that's the way to go in corporate companies now?
Also, you can use vmware to boot your native windows installation and switch between booting it in a vm and natively. You have to use hardware profiles so you don't have to keep rebooting when it "finds new hardware", but with some preparation and effort it's possible and quite usable.That's interesting to know. I've never tried that with Windows. IIRC I did it once with Linux many moons ago. What I could have done with recently is a tool to create a VMWare image from a physical hard drive without having to use things like Clonezilla. I believe there are some tools out there but I can't find them.
I think that the main thing in either case is to have the harddrive controller drivers. Then at least you can boot and sort out any missing drivers.Yup, as long as the HAL is also correct (although I have a feeling that in most cases these days machines generally have the same HAL).
Assuming the drivers are on there, the diffence is that linux will just work but windows will tell you it's finding new hardware, ask you to reactivate and tell you to reboot.Wouldn't ask to re-activate for corporate copies of Windows or SLIC protected versions. But for those folks who have legit standard OEM copies, then yeah, hassle all the way with re-activation. I still don't see why Microsoft bother with it, it's not as if there are ways to get around it one way or another.
Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html