New MB recommendations

[C M Reinehr]

Tony,

I am far from being an expert on this (or any other subject) but I believe 
these answers to your questions are correct:

On Tuesday 27 February 2007 12:54, Tony Alfrey wrote:
<snip>
>
> Ah, more complicated.  I have some apps that run on old distros and new
> distros.  Like the CAD program that started this discussion.  And
> besides, I'd like to keep the drives tweaked as they were, if possible.
>
>
> So we have that initrd depends on the kernel, and the kernel is
> pre-compiled with the distro.
> So my question remains
> a)  will a drive with a distro compiled for a P2 boot on a P4?

	Unlikely--not because of the switch from P2 to P4 but because of all of the 
other hardware changes. Whereas your kernel may load & execute on the P4, 
your six year old distribution just is not going to have compatible drivers 
for any of the various controllers.

	Type lsmod from a command line and see what modules are running. I just did 
so here and had 63 different modules loaded, i.e, serial & parallel ports, 
network ports, cd/dvd, usb, ide, sata. A lot of this hardware wasn't even in 
existence when your distribution was compiled.

> b)  what is the relevance of initrd to determining if a drive that boots
> on a P2 will boot on a P4?

	An out-of-the-box kernel shipped with a new distribution has modules for just 
about everything plus the kitchen sink and, IIANM, will construct an initrd 
on-the-fly using the necessary modules for your particular hardware 
configuration. So, your old initrd just is not going to work, for the same 
reason your old kernel won't work--it just will not have the correct modules 
for your hardware.

> BTW, this is all very helpful information and I appreciate your time to
> explain these things.

	In short, it's going to be a whole lot easier to get your old applications to 
run in a new distribution than it is to get your old distribution to run on 
new hardware.

HTH

cmr
-- 
Debian 'Etch' - Registered Linux User #241964
--------
"More laws, less justice." -- Marcus Tullius Ciceroca, 42 BC