Cody Hurst wrote: you cannot mix hd installs with other machines because when you install linux, it is compiled and molded to that particular system and no other systems I have the same issue when I do it. Do a clean install on the machine you want to run it on. Say what? This is not true, I have done it dozens of times. I have in fact set up machines as build machines for others. The only thing that is "molded" is the kernel. As said in recent thread, what you need is a generic kernel, not pentium or amd specific. To be more clear, in the kernel config, you want 386 processor: Subarchitecture Type PC-compatible (CONFIG_X86_PC) Processor family 386 (CONFIG_M386) A 386 kernel will boot on anything. You also want generic chipset stuff, not anything specific to the original hardware. The easiest way to achieve this is to get one of the already made generic kernels, the ones that boot when you run an install. On slackware that is called bare.i, it will boot on anything! Equivalents are available on other distros. And repeating what I said before: if a kernel will not boot on any system, boot with floppy or cd, load the kernel from that media but use the root= parameter to boot into the root on the hard drive. This has never failed for me unless the drive is toast. You need to catch the boot: prompt and do something like boot: bare.i root=/dev/hda1 noinitrd ro where bare.i is the name of your generic kernel. You should be able to find a generic kernel for debian. Once you have booted from the CD or floppy, with the root= to your hard drive, you have a running system, build a kernel on the target and then update bootloader. It is definitely possible to move drives from one machine to another. -- Doug
