Subject: Re: 32-Bit Userland On 64-Bit Machine?
To: None <rmk@rmkhome.com>
From: Bill Dorsey <dorsey@lila.com>
List: port-sparc64
Date: 05/24/2003 23:11:13
Are you sure it's 200MHz?  A friend of mine has Solaris 9 installed on 
his 270MHz Ultra, and I'm pretty sure when we checked the executables 
in userland, they were 32-bit.  Also, Sun's "officially supported" 
version of Linux (Debian) runs all the ultrasparcs with a 32-bit kernel 
and 32-bit userland.

In any event, after many hours of experimenting on my Ultra, I believe 
I've discovered a (relatively) simple way to install a 32-bit kernel 
and userland.  Maybe this could be a FAQ somewhere on the NetBSD web 
site?

1)  Install the 64-bit miniroot filesystem on a disk partition (I used 
the swap partition)
2)  Boot the miniroot off the miniroot partition, and install NetBSD 
normally (with 64-bit kernel/executables)
3)  After sysinst is finished and returns you to a shell prompt, start 
it up again
4)  Now tell it you want to install/upgrade.  When it asks you where to 
get the binary sets from, specify a directory
     containing the 32-bit binary sets.
5)  Once this second install is finished, return to the shell prompt, 
mount the root filesystem on /mnt, and replace the
     kernel with the 32-bit sun4u kernel from the NetBSD ftp site.
6)  Reboot your machine, and you should be running a 32-bit 
kernel/32-bit userland on your Ultra.

While it may be that running in 64-bit mode is the right way to go down 
the line, until more of the pkgsrc sources I depend on (like cyrus and 
apache-ssl) work in 64-bit big-endian mode, I'm stuck running in 32-bit 
mode.  Given all the compiler warnings I saw scroll by when I was 
trying to get these (and other packages) working in 64-bit mode, it 
looks like it will take quite a bit of work to get them all 
straightened out.

--
Bill Dorsey

On Saturday, May 24, 2003, at 18:57 US/Pacific, Rick Kelly wrote:

> Bill Dorsey said:
>
>> I find it a bit strange that what seems to me to be the most useful
>> configuration of an ultra-sparc based system (running in 32-bit mode
>> for best compatibility -- just as Sun does with Solaris) requires one
>> to perform a lot of contortions before getting it working.
>
> From Solaris 8 and onwards, it only installs 32bit kernel on Ultra 
> sparc
> boxes of 200 mhz or less. I believe that Solaris 10 is eliminating 
> 32bit
> kernel mode all together.
>
>
> -- 
> Rick Kelly  rmk@rmkhome.com  www.rmkhome.com
>
>