I have a jellyfin server running debian 11 that was modest spec when I built in early 2013, and isn’t doing a great job of keeping up with new media encoding or multiple streams now.
I’m looking to upgrade the core components but the thought of reinstalling the OS, rebuilding the services, and reconfiguring everything has me putting it off. It’s running an AMD A6-5400k APU, the new target hardware will be Intel i7-7700k w/ a dedicated GPU. There’s also 4 storage HDDs and a small 128gb system SSD for the host attached.
Ive heard Linux ships with drivers for most everything it supports… so I’m wondering If I were to just swap the mobo/CPU/ram could I reasonably expect debian to “just work”, or are my hesitations right and I need to plan to reinstall the OS? Is there any way to back up the system and configuration to simply restore it after the new hardware is in? I’d really like any suggestions to make this as painless as possible! Thank you
Bite the bullet, backup everything and start fresh. This time, setup LVM (w/wo encryption, your choice) and make sure to setup /var, /tmp, /home, etc. as separate volumes.
In another 10 years when you need to fully upgrade, you can preserve specific volumes and just swap out the system volumes with new installs. This also helps in case of issues which require system refreshes. Most importantly, as long as the drive isn’t busted, all you have to worry about backing up are specific configs and your home volume. The rest becomes simple.
I would recommend running a couple disaster recovery scenarios once setup.