Cloning FreeBSD SSD from Thinkpad to Thinkstation

3

3bark

I've been really happy with FreeBSD on my thinkpad carbon x1 7th gen, after working through a few hiccups of getting it installed and consistently updated properly. I'm interested in moving to a desktop set up instead soon though and am looking into a thinkstation. For simplicity, if we assume the same BIOS generation and same CPU, could I simply clone out the SSD to a thinkstation-friendly SSD and maybe update a few things like webcamd etc? Or is it likely better to just build this all up from scratch? I guess the question is are they more similar than different? Curious if anyone has experience with this transition since thinkpad+freebsd documentation is more robust.
 
With the default kernels FreeBSD will work no problem by moving a closed HD or SSD to another computer of the same architecture. That thing where an install nails down drivers needed for booting, which might then not match the new target system, does not apply to FreeBSD.
 
OTOH, installing from scratch, reinstalling packages from a pkg prime-list generated list on the already set-up system and cloning your /home dataset(s) (or copying the files and config you actually want/need) also isn't that big of a deal.
That's how I usually set up a new system that I want to be "similar" to e.g. one of my main desktops or if I replace a system and want to keep the old one in a working state (like my work laptop recently).
 
sko said:
OTOH, installing from scratch, reinstalling packages from a pkg prime-list generated list on the already set-up system and cloning your /home dataset(s) (or copying the files and config you actually want/need) also isn't that big of a deal.
Click to expand...
Added bonus, you're also not moving a lot of crap that may have collected on the 'old' install. So it's nice and fresh again.
 
Hmm this is probably leaning me towards a fresh install and then reinstalling about half the packages found in the existing machine's prime-list, even if I may have saved some small amount of time initially by cloning. There was some nuance with getting the wifi networking setup properly after the initial install, but the thinkstation would almost definitely have different networking requirements even if it were the same CPU so that savings would likely be lost. And as mentioned the current build has collected quite a few ultimately unnecessary packages. Thanks all.
 
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