Motherboard died on my Ubuntu machine.

[Arcadio]

Just when everything was set up the way I liked it my motherboard died. If I replace it with an identical model, will everything work as before without any tweaking or configuration? What if I replace the motherboard with a different motherboard with different chipset?

 

[lxskllr]

Everything should work fine. Linux is very flexible with hardware.

 

[Jodell88]

Everything should be fine.

 

[joetekubi]

Replaced my AMD mb with an Intel i7 mb running Ubuntu 64 bit linux. Didn't have to change one thing. Everything worked perfectly.

 

[agibby5]

Replaced my AMD mb with an Intel i7 mb running Ubuntu 64 bit linux. Didn't have to change one thing. Everything worked perfectly.

Wow, that's awesome.

 

[mv2devnull]

The bootloader loads kernel and initial ramfs image that contains drivers. Kernel loads the rest from "normal" filesystems with the help of the drivers. Installation images do contain ramfs image that contains full set of drivers, but normal ramfs image tends to have a stripped down set, just enough to mount the necessary filesystems.

Therefore, it is theoretically possible that a new motherboard requires a driver not included in the ramfs image. In practice that is highly unlikely. Even if that happens, one can boot from Live/Install image in "rescue" mode and recreate the ramfs image with necessary drivers.


I've seen in recent Fedora/RHEL/SL/CentOS the network configuration to require some tweaking. MAC-address of NIC has been stored in the configuration "to retain consistent naming", and mismatch due to MAC having changed leads to NIC not being activated. A trivial thing to fix. On the other hand, if one does use DHCP (like most of us do) and has static rule to give this PC a specific IP, then the MAC in the rule has to be updated in the DHCP server regardless of whether the OS needs a tweak or not.


Overall, everything should be fine.

 

[Nothinman]

Just when everything was set up the way I liked it my motherboard died. If I replace it with an identical model, will everything work as before without any tweaking or configuration? What if I replace the motherboard with a different motherboard with different chipset?

There may be minor things like eth0 becoming eth1, but it should boot up and work just fine without much finagling if any.

 

[Steltek]

If you are re-installing an identical replacement motherboard, simply mark the positions of all the hardware and cables on the old board before removal. Swap the boards, and replace everything exactly as it was on the old board. This will minimize the chance you'll have any problems at all booting after the swap.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Same model/revision should be fine. Different model revision is hit and miss but it will most likely work too though I have seen issues such as Ethernet interfaces changing and being stuck with invalid ones. I have seen times where it wont boot but that is rare.

 

[Nothinman]

If you are re-installing an identical replacement motherboard, simply mark the positions of all the hardware and cables on the old board before removal. Swap the boards, and replace everything exactly as it was on the old board. This will minimize the chance you'll have any problems at all booting after the swap.

You don't even need to worry about that these days. Almost all distros use static identifiers (UUIDs, filesystem labels, LVM, etc) in fstab so it shouldn't have any problems finding the correct drives regardless of port.

 

[VinDSL]

Linux is very flexible with hardware.

True!

I carry a bootable USB key, loaded with Peppermint OS.

I've booted it up in any number of computers, and it works every time.

I don't suppose the OP's situation is a whole lot different... when you think about it.