# Upgrading motherboard/cpu without re-installing?



## Drizzt321 (Feb 14, 2020)

So I'm planning on switching out the motherboard and CPU on my current FreeBSD NAS/VM system at home. I'm going to export the main storage ZFS array, then backup the /etc and /usr/local/etc config files just in case. I should be fine just booting up with the new hardware without worrying about having to re-install FreeBSD, correct? Or is there a 'reconfigure/reinstall' hardware command that'll help? Any other gotchas?


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## SirDice (Feb 18, 2020)

Drizzt321 said:


> I should be fine just booting up with the new hardware without worrying about having to re-install FreeBSD, correct?


Unless it's some exotic hardware that requires extra drivers it should be fine without having to re-install. Don't try to run a 64 bit FreeBSD on a 32 bit CPU though, that's not going to work. The other way around (32 bit OS on 64 bit CPU) will work without problems.


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## Ordoban (Feb 18, 2020)

You maybe have to edit /etc/pf.conf and /etc/rc.conf if the NIC vendor is changing.
For example 
	
	



```
ifconfig_em0="DHCP"
```
 to 
	
	



```
ifconfig_re0="DHCP"
```


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## SirDice (Feb 18, 2020)

You can use `ifconfig_DEFAULT`, then it'll just use the first ethernet interface it can find. For most, single interface, systems this should work fine. Things get a little unpredictable when there's more than one interface.


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## eternal_noob (Feb 18, 2020)

SirDice said:


> The other way around (32 bit OS on 64 bit CPU) will work without problems.


While this is true for the base system, there are a few packages which don't work as good as they should. For example, the pluma text editor crashes when one wants to use CTRL-S for saving files. See Thread 73996.


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## Drizzt321 (Feb 18, 2020)

By and large this was quite painless. Other than needing to upgrade from 11.3 to 12.1 to solve an issue with bhyve Linux VMs trying to install spectre v2 mitigations and causing linux kernel panics inside the VMs. Once I upgraded to 12.1, including updating all installed packages, that all went away


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