Re: Questions bfore installing amd64

[jnemeth%victoria.tc.ca@localhost (John Nemeth)]

On Feb 25, 10:33pm, Hubert Feyrer wrote:
} On Mon, 10 Nov 2008, Gobbledegeek wrote:
} 
} > 2. I thik this is not possible, but let me ask anyways - Can I upgrade
} > form i386 to amd64 in place after booting the i386 OS? How ?
} 
} I've never tried this, but maybe follow the usual upgrade procedure:
} 1) boot new kernel (and hope that compat32 is in the new one ;)

     This will blow up very badly due to differences in device major
numbers.

} 2) replace userland - extract all sets but etc.tgz
} 3) use "etcupdate -s etc.tgz" to update your /etc files
} 4) see if you need to update the bootloader - it's likely.
}     installboot(8) gives help.

     Last I heard, the i386 bootloader isn't capable of loading an
amd64 kernel.  That may have changed by now.

     You pretty much need to use sysinst to do an uprade.  You then
need to hope that compat32 works, otherwise all your packages will
break.  When I did this a couple of years ago, compat32 didn't work.
There may also be other gotchas.  I did this a couple of years ago and
don't recall all the details now.  I will point out that this is not
for the faint of heart and unless you're an extremely capable sysadmin
you shouldn't be doing this on a production system.

}-- End of excerpt from Hubert Feyrer