[gentoo-user] 32to64 bit migration guide

[gentoo-user] 32to64 bit migration guide

[SpaceCake]

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Hi,

Is there a user friendly guide or howto to help me to migrate my 32 bit
gentoo to 64 bit without loosing my settings?

Thank you
Laszlo

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Re: [gentoo-user] 32to64 bit migration guide

[Alex Schuster]

SpaceCake writes:

> Is there a user friendly guide or howto to help me to migrate my 32 bit
> gentoo to 64 bit without loosing my settings?

A similar question came up just yesterday, look for the 'Gentoo 32bit-
>64bit: How?' thread.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] 32to64 bit migration guide

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 17:44 on Tuesday 07 September 2010, SpaceCake 
did opine thusly:

> Hi,
> 
> Is there a user friendly guide or howto to help me to migrate my 32 bit
> gentoo to 64 bit without loosing my settings?
> 
> Thank you
> Laszlo


Forget it, don't even try. You might succeed, but it will not be worth the 
effort. You will complete the following steps in about half the time:

1. Back up /etc and anything else you want to keep
2. Reinstall
3. Set CHOST to something suitable
4. emerge -e world
5. Restore stuff from step #1

It's an interesting exercise to try and do the migration, people who like 
puzzles enjoy it. If your goal is to have a 64 bit system using the route of 
least pain, best to follow the path with lots of consensus around here - the 
one above.


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

[gentoo-user] Re: 32to64 bit migration guide

[James]

Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes:


> > Is there a user friendly guide or howto to help me to migrate my 32 bit
> > gentoo to 64 bit without loosing my settings?

> Forget it, don't even try. You might succeed, but it will not be worth the 
> effort. You will complete the following steps in about half the time:


Follow Alan's advice and also use this page if you have an AMD system,
or the appropriate page for Intel......


good hunting!
James


http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Safe_Cflags/AMD

Re: [gentoo-user] 32to64 bit migration guide

[Stefan G. Weichinger]

Am 07.09.2010 18:05, schrieb Alan McKinnon:

> 1. Back up /etc and anything else you want to keep
> 2. Reinstall
> 3. Set CHOST to something suitable
> 4. emerge -e world
> 5. Restore stuff from step #1
> 
> It's an interesting exercise to try and do the migration, people who like 
> puzzles enjoy it. If your goal is to have a 64 bit system using the route of 
> least pain, best to follow the path with lots of consensus around here - the 
> one above.

Yep, did that back then with my main workstation, and now I take that
"nice exercise" to migrate my thinkpad.

I don't remember in detail how I "merged" /etc ... I now start building
that system on top of a 64bit-VM-template I maintained for such purposes.

Any ideas/hints?

S

Re: [gentoo-user] 32to64 bit migration guide

[SpaceCake]

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Thank you.

The reason to change to 64bit is maybe I'll have 8 GB instead of 4GB of
memory. PAE is already enabled in kernel, so I have no problem accessing
memory above 3Gbyte. Is there any performance increase can be expected if I
spend my time on this migration/reinstall?

Thanks
Laszlo


2010/9/7 Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>

> Apparently, though unproven, at 17:44 on Tuesday 07 September 2010,
> SpaceCake
> did opine thusly:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > Is there a user friendly guide or howto to help me to migrate my 32 bit
> > gentoo to 64 bit without loosing my settings?
> >
> > Thank you
> > Laszlo
>
>
> Forget it, don't even try. You might succeed, but it will not be worth the
> effort. You will complete the following steps in about half the time:
>
> 1. Back up /etc and anything else you want to keep
> 2. Reinstall
> 3. Set CHOST to something suitable
> 4. emerge -e world
> 5. Restore stuff from step #1
>
> It's an interesting exercise to try and do the migration, people who like
> puzzles enjoy it. If your goal is to have a 64 bit system using the route
> of
> least pain, best to follow the path with lots of consensus around here -
> the
> one above.
>
>
> --
> alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] 32to64 bit migration guide

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 21:08 on Tuesday 07 September 2010, SpaceCake 
did opine thusly:

> Thank you.
> 
> The reason to change to 64bit is maybe I'll have 8 GB instead of 4GB of
> memory. PAE is already enabled in kernel, so I have no problem accessing
> memory above 3Gbyte. Is there any performance increase can be expected if I
> spend my time on this migration/reinstall?

Are you doing massively parallel floating point computations that would 
benefit from a full 64 bit data structure?

If yes, then you will see a performance increase. The amount is, well, YMMV.
If no, then you won't.

What you will get is not being limited by that 3G per process limit and the 
overhead of PAE.

I have 100+ servers at work. There are only a few that require 64 bit - 4 huge 
database servers and oddly enough the RT ticket queue box. It's the queue for 
abuse@<where_i_work> so it gets hammered pretty heavily. But we install 64 bit 
OSes everywhere for consistency sake.

It is a fallacy (fairly common unfortunately) that 64 bit gives a performance 
increase per se. It does not. RAM speed, disk speed, network speed, bus speed 
are all largely unaffected by 32/64 bit. It does let your CPU run in it's 
native mode - if there even is such a thing on x86 - and as progress marches 
on regardless so 64 bit is where the focus is these days.

You will find the occasional issue with brain-dead proprietary software 
products (note carefully how I'm NOT looking at Adobe...) but that is fixable 
with nsspuginwrapper.

Reinstall by all mans if it makes you happy. Downtime will be a few hours.
Don't migrate unless you are a toolchain geek and want street cred from being 
able to do it. It's not worth the pain.




> 
> Thanks
> Laszlo
> 
> 
> 2010/9/7 Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>
> 
> > Apparently, though unproven, at 17:44 on Tuesday 07 September 2010,
> > SpaceCake
> > 
> > did opine thusly:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > Is there a user friendly guide or howto to help me to migrate my 32 bit
> > > gentoo to 64 bit without loosing my settings?
> > > 
> > > Thank you
> > > Laszlo
> > 
> > Forget it, don't even try. You might succeed, but it will not be worth
> > the effort. You will complete the following steps in about half the
> > time:
> > 
> > 1. Back up /etc and anything else you want to keep
> > 2. Reinstall
> > 3. Set CHOST to something suitable
> > 4. emerge -e world
> > 5. Restore stuff from step #1
> > 
> > It's an interesting exercise to try and do the migration, people who like
> > puzzles enjoy it. If your goal is to have a 64 bit system using the route
> > of
> > least pain, best to follow the path with lots of consensus around here -
> > the
> > one above.
> > 
> > 
> > --
> > alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] 32to64 bit migration guide

[Walter Dnes]

On Tue, Sep 07, 2010 at 11:09:15PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote

> You will find the occasional issue with brain-dead proprietary
> software products (note carefully how I'm NOT looking at Adobe...) but
> that is fixable with nsspuginwrapper.

  Note that WINE requires 32-bit support libraries installed *DURING THE
OS INSTALL* to run on a 64-bit system.  Apparently 32-bit support can be
added after the fact, but it's painful, and a re-install is a lot easier.
What I ended up doing was emerging qemu-kvm and installing a 32-bit
gentoo guest in that.  Then I installed WINE inside the 32-bit guest OS.
I run WINE and the one Windows app over ssh into X, so that individual
windows pop up looking native to my 64-bit desktop.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>