Upgrading mobo/CPU; do I have to recompile *everything*?

The Mountain Man · l33t Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 643

I'm planning to get a new motherboard and CPU for my system. I'm currently running an Athlon Thunderbird and everything has been compiled using the appropriate flags. If I upgrade to an Athlon XP, will my current Gentoo system still be compatible or will I have to reboot from the Live CD and spend the next week recompiling everything?

(It's a given I'll have the recompile the kernel. I'm just not sure about the rest of the software.)
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ravenqr · n00b Joined: 23 Apr 2004 Posts: 13

You shouldn't have to emerge world to upgrade from thunderbird to athlon xp...but it might help. However, the system will RUN.

The thing you might want to do first is before you switch out the mobo and all that you should compile a new kernel on your existing system and make a SEPARATE entry for it in lilo.conf (or grub) so that when you switch everything out and go to reboot and see if everything works the system will boot up with the new kernel with support for all the new chipsets and bridges on the new motherboard...

If you don't recompile the kernel first then you may have to re-install the whole deal because the new mobo almost certainly has new ide chipset (which won't even boot probably with the old kernel) unless you have "generica pci ide support" in the kernel. Accomodate in the new kernel your new built-in sound and other things that change with the new mobo....

Hope this helps

The Mountain Man · l33t Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 643

Yeah, that answers my question. Thanks.
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Nate_S · Guru Joined: 18 Mar 2004 Posts: 414

Although if you don't it shouldn't require a reinstall, just a boot from the livecd to compile a new kernel.

Athlon tbird and xp CFLAGS are close enough that the system should run perfectly well. The athlon tbird can do nothing the xp can't so you don't have to worry about things not runing like moving from a pentium 4 to an athlon or vice versa. You might get a slight speed boost from recompiling, in that you could take full advantage of the abilitys of your new chip, but I'd recommend, unless you have some other reason to recompile anyways, that you set the new CFLAGS in your make.conf and then everything will get recompiled eventually as you emerge -u world over the next few months.

The Mountain Man · l33t Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 643

That's the plan. I'm purposely sticking with an AMD CPU because I don't want to have to recompile my whole system.
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