Kubuntu: Moving an installation hard drive from one system to another

One of my local servers died a quiet death last week. Much as I tried to revive the li'l bitch, she refused to accede to my plaintive entreaties. She is now consigned to a forlorn corner and I am yet to see to her last rites. In the meantime, I have recently introduced a new addition to my family of servers through the cannibalisation of older (and now retired) members of the same. So, I settled on trying to see if I could save the soul of my now recently defunct Kubuntu box by simply transferring its hard drive to this new server. When I tried to do so, this is what transpired:

• Once the drive was transferred, I booted her up.
• I encountered a bout of teeth-grinding during boot-up, but she came through.
• However, in flying colours things were not. I ended up with a command prompt rather than a KDE login screen. This is understandable seeing as to how everything about the hardware has changed.
• So, I logged in and all seemed to be well. I pinged an external IP and discovered that my Internet connectivity was back even though this PC was using a PCI network card rather than an onboard option. DHCP++
• Now, my problem basically amounted to getting the X-window system back up.
• On a hunch, I went to /etc/X11 to verify the state of the X system's configuration files.
• Noting that the contents of the xorg.conf file still contained references to the old system, I decided to see if I could force Kubuntu to rebuild this file.
• I simply renamed this file to xorg.conf.defunct

and subsequently just restarted my system.

• Wonder upon wonders, I was now able to see the Kubuntu login window.

Once I logged in, I was greeted with a pop-up asking me if I wanted to remove a slew of devices that were no longer needed. I agreed and all seemed to be back to normal. It also appears that newer installations do not even bother with the xorg.conf file. Since my system was an upgrade of older Kubuntu systems, this vestigial file was still about and was taking precedence over the system generated one.

FYI, KDE can also be started from the command-line using the command, sudo initctl restart kdm .

I still have some minor glitches that I will have to iron out in the next few days. But, I must say that this experience was pretty painless. Good job, FOSS Linux.