On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 10:15:02AM -0700, Bill Dorsey wrote:

> So, I am wondering if anyone has had any luck in installing a 32-bit 
> sparc userland on a 64-bit machine?  If so, I would love to know how 
> you did it!

Well, I did not update it very recently, but I do so from time to time.

You have basically two options to run 32bit userland:

 - run a 32bit sun4u kernel (which is a sparc64 kernel compiled with a
   sparc toolchain and appropriate build options)
 - run a 64bit kernel with 64bit userland base, but COMPAT_NETBSD32
   option in the kernel and a sparc (32bit) userland + pkgs under
   /emul/netbsd

From your description it sounds like you ended up with the latter option
but unpacking the 32bit stuff in / instead of /emul/netbsd.

I myself use the former approach. To install it from scratch just use the
SUN4U kernel from the NetBSD sparc distribution and a regular sparc userland.

Using a 64 bit kernel may result in better performance in some situations,
but it does not usually make a big difference in my practical experience.

Martin