32bit to 64bit

[marks_linux]

Is there a striaght forward update path from 32bit to 64bit without a re-install?
Can you install the 64bit kernel and then download applcation updates as needed?

Mark

[Bana]

I don't believe that there is, it would be like ripping the guts out and sewing new ones back in, doable but not suggested

[linuxdude3]

I had a 32-bit 2.6.5 kernel from the original FC2 install disks running on an old AMD Thunderbird (K7) chip on an old motherboard for which I cannot remember the model number.

Then I swapped the motherboard/CPU for an Albatron KT800 Pro II and a 3GHz Athlon64, while reusing the drives, soundcard and all the rest. I rebooted on 2.6.5 and it (FC2's kudzu) auto-detected all the changes on reboot, and driver-wise removed the old devices from the old motherboard and reinstalled the new devices from the new motherboard. I only had to reboot a second time to get the auto-detect to fully work for the gigabit ethernet, so there was minimum pain.

Then I downloaded the latest 2.6.8.1-521 source from kernel.org and configured the options for my system (that took a while!), and built the kernel from the source code using the K8 (Athlon64 chip using X86_64) options. Installing that kernel from the make process automatically made a new kernel boot option in grub called 2.6.8.1-521custom. So I boot from that now and have no real problems. I did have to manually edit the modprobe.conf and local rcinit files to get the sata drive to be reloaded on boot. It seems the sata-via driver gets lost after booting, but that doesn't crash the system. You have to reload the driver and remount the drive.

After that, I installed the latest nvidia 6111 drivers which installed and work with no apparent problems. I have an XFX 5200 (geforce FX based) video card.

Note that I boot on an IDE drive and have a second drive as SATA for my data/video storage (still working on getting mythtv running). If you are trying to boot on an SATA drive then I don't have any experience with that. My SATA drive, a new Maxtor 300G unit ($238 at newegg.com), is NOT in any RAID or LVM or anything other than being an individual drive. I have the motherboard BIOS set to use the SATA port as any old IDE (non-RAID) port.

So I do have the old 2.6.5 kernel in 32-bit mode to fall back in case there are any nasty problems running in 64-bit mode. None have shown up so far.

[linuxdude3]

What I just realized (yes, I built a kernel for the first time) is that the default config for the 2.6.8.1-521 build was still a base architecture of i386, and not the x86_64. I realized that from a yum update command which still showed getting i386 packages. My uname -a shows an athlon i686 with base architecture of i386. Bummer.

I tried the ARCH=x86_64 option to make in the kernel source directory but gcc complains that code mode kernel is not supported in 32-bit mode and quits. Arrgh.

So how does one cross-compile the 2.6.8.1-521 source on a 32-bit kernel to make an x86_64 kernel? If this takes too long to figure out, it may be easier to re-install from a fresh x86_64 ISO.

[Bana]

If this takes too long to figure out, it may be easier to re-install from a fresh x86_64 ISO.

You might want to try this sooner rather than later, unless you find it a challenge to mess with two architecture's worth of libraries to cross-compile things. Your best bet would be to make extensive use of libtool (I'm not really sure how it works though).

GL anyhow.

[linuxdude3]

Well, trying to figure out how to cross-compile was too much work, so I just reinstalled from the FC2 x86_64 DVD. That installed blew up (i.e. bug I think) unless I picked the minimal software package, so some package didn't work. Unfortunately the failure wiped out the windows and mouse such that I could not see which package was failing. So after getting the minimum package to work I was able to later add the packages. Strange.