Moving RH8 install to another box

[Spoonfed]

I am wanting to move a complete RedHat 8 install from one box to another. Current box is a IBM server (SCSI drives etc etc). Not sure of the new box spec yet (it may only be temporary) so may have normal IDE drives (though i'd guess having SCSI also would be much easier)

While yes i could load up a fresh install and bring everything over, i am no exactly Linuxperienced a great deal and the box has some prorietary software (locally produced and rare) that i KNOW i could never get up and running again (the customer wants to avoid the software house as they are moving away etc).

Any suggestions would be great. Ive though maybe load up a fresh RH 8 install (have to find such an old distro first) and copy over folders of relevance (though im not to certain here what i should pull over). Another is perhaps a ghost of the existing system, but i guess it would be unlikely this would boot on a new/different setup?

Thanks
Danny

[bigtomrodney]

If you know where the files are, all bins/libs config files etc then do a clean install and copy them over. the ghost option may work well - but are you using a RAID and which filesystem is it you are using?

If you get a bootloader installed you might be able to just copy over everything in one go. There's no registry to fight with here (!) but hardware differences may be your trouble. Also are we loooking at the same architectures?

[Spoonfed]

bigtomrodney,

Thing is i don't know what is were, there software is very "custom" to put it nicely haha. They have it setup to use dumb terminals just for this software, remote access etc etc. Hence why i figured the only way to have it "work" in the same manor would be to dump the entire system over?

It is SCSI RAID1 setup (which i don't think should case issues). File system as far as i know is standard linux (would have to check, i didn't load/setup the system).

Will be X86 architecture still will be used, though current CPU is a Xeon, may move to a P4 or something.

My guess would be the biggest hardware hassel with a ghost/complete copy type setup will be harddrive systems etc (ie going from SCSI to IDE etc). If things like network cards etc are fairly generic i think much of the rest should be ok???

[drakebasher]

Just for reference, I have copied a complete system using only the 'cp -a' command. You'd want to create partitions to correspond to currently mounted partitions, or else deal with adjustments in /etc/fstab. You'll probably need to make some modifications in fstab, anyways. Remote connections could be more complicated, but may need no additional configuration, or simply changing IP address and route for the new machine. Of course the bootload script will need to be changed to match the new arrangement.

Like bigtomrodney said, I think hardware differences will be the biggest problem.