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Linux Installation , BIOS to UEFI upgrade?

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  • 02-12-2016 7:55pm
    #1
    Keplar240B
    Registered Users Posts: 883 ✭✭✭


    My current Desktop PC is a BIOS motherboard its six years old now.
    I am thinking of upgrading my Desktop tower PC.
    I might buy a new one or just a new motherboard not sure yet
    either way If I get a machine with UEFI motherboard ...
    I have a arch Linux installation on a SSD in this machine and I want to just physically transfer the SSD from the old BIOS machine to the new UEFI machine.
    Will it just work? Will it boot without any changes?

    From wiki
    For backward compatibility, most UEFI implementations also support booting from MBR-partitioned disks, through the Compatibility Support Module (CSM) that provides legacy BIOS compatibility.[35] In that case, booting Linux on UEFI systems is the same as on legacy BIOS-based systems.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface

    The boot loader is grub2
    I never worked with UEFI from a boot/install point of view before.


Comments

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    #2
    Johnboy1951
    Registered Users Posts: 14,017 ✭✭✭✭Johnboy1951


    I would boot the new hardware using a non-UEFI live USB, which should provide the opportunity to get the firmware settings correct ...... such as disabling Secure Boot, and enabling CSM/Legacy boot mode, as well as any other tweaks you might wish to make.

    Once that is done I would then attempt to boot the original drive. ;)


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    #3
    L.Jenkins
    Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 19,240 Mod ✭✭✭✭L.Jenkins


    Never thought of that before as I've never taken a drive from one machine with Linux and stuck it in another. Keep me posted.


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    #4
    human 19
    Registered Users Posts: 851 ✭✭✭human 19


    have you done a transfer between PCs before?
    Apart from the issue you mention there is the blkid/fstab issue. I have previously changed between machines by renaming the partition UUID but just i installed again from scratch when switching to a UEFI machine. That's probably because I hadnt got my head around the possibility of using the legacy boot mode as Johnnyboy mentioned. Later on I installed grub and switched back to using grub after the install.

    If you disable secure boot and boot up your live clonezilla (or preferably qt4-fs-archiver) in legacy rather than UEFI mode then I would assume you would be able to restore the boot into saved partition assuming the UUIDs and fstab match up.


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    #5
    Johnboy1951
    Registered Users Posts: 14,017 ✭✭✭✭Johnboy1951


    I am not familiar with Arch, but if you have done a very specific install for the old hardware, with no 'extra' and unneeded drivers etc etc in the install, then you might meet with difficulties with the new hardware.

    Thankfully I don't meet with these difficulties because PCLOS has an application (mylivecd) for creating a Live ISO from a running installed OS.


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    #6
    croo
    Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 1,335 Mod ✭✭✭✭croo


    L.Jenkins wrote: »
    Never thought of that before as I've never taken a drive from one machine with Linux and stuck it in another. Keep me posted.
    I have and amazingly it just boot like nothing had changed! This was a few years ago and UEFI wasn't an issue then. I moved the drive from a dell latitude e6500 to a thinkpad w520, then later from the W520 to another thinkpad, a W540. Both times without issues.


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