Safest way to go from x86 to x86_64
 

Hi,

My main box decided to snuff it last week (motherboard and processor decided to fry). My erstwhile friend in the computer shop I use has said that he has a nice 64 bit processor and motherboard going for a small amount of money.


The problem I have is that if I go the 64 bit route then I'll need to install the 64 bit OS (I can stay 32 bit, but what's the point with 8Gb of memory).

Is there a safe way to install the x86_64 system over the 32 bit version and then clean off the 32 bit stuff that is no longer needed? If I was using f14, I'd just trash the drive and then install, but I've got things how I want them under rawhide.


I've not done this before, so advice before I do it would be appreciated.

TTFN

Paul

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Safest way to go from x86 to x86_64
 

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 02:07:37PM +0000, Paul Johnson wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My main box decided to snuff it last week (motherboard and processor decided
> to fry). My erstwhile friend in the computer shop I use has said that he has
> a nice 64 bit processor and motherboard going for a small amount of money.
>
> The problem I have is that if I go the 64 bit route then I'll need to
> install the 64 bit OS (I can stay 32 bit, but what's the point with 8Gb of
> memory).
>
> Is there a safe way to install the x86_64 system over the 32 bit version and
> then clean off the 32 bit stuff that is no longer needed? If I was using
> f14, I'd just trash the drive and then install, but I've got things how I
> want them under rawhide.

Not really. I would definitely suggest that you reinstall.

I've been using x86-64 machines routinely for 6 years now, and they
are better in every way than i386.

Rich.

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Safest way to go from x86 to x86_64
 

Hi,

On 14 December 2010 14:27, Richard W.M. Jones <rjones@redhat.com> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 02:07:37PM +0000, Paul Johnson wrote:



> Is there a safe way to install the x86_64 system over the 32 bit version and

> then clean off the 32 bit stuff that is no longer needed? If I was using

> f14, I'd just trash the drive and then install, but I've got things how I

> want them under rawhide.



Not really. *I would definitely suggest that you reinstall.

I thought that would be the case - just wanted to check to ensure it's not something I can do another way.

Okay, let's try another. Is there a way to grab a list of the packages installed and use a network installer to do the job based on the list?


TTFN

Paul

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Safest way to go from x86 to x86_64
 

On Tue, 2010-12-14 at 14:35 +0000, Paul Johnson wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 14 December 2010 14:27, Richard W.M. Jones <rjones@redhat.com>
> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 02:07:37PM +0000, Paul Johnson wrote:
>
> > Is there a safe way to install the x86_64 system over the 32
> bit version and
> > then clean off the 32 bit stuff that is no longer needed? If
> I was using
> > f14, I'd just trash the drive and then install, but I've got
> things how I
> > want them under rawhide.
>
>
> Not really. I would definitely suggest that you reinstall.
>
> I thought that would be the case - just wanted to check to ensure it's
> not something I can do another way.
>
> Okay, let's try another. Is there a way to grab a list of the packages
> installed and use a network installer to do the job based on the list?
>

sure - kickstart does just that.

-sv



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Safest way to go from x86 to x86_64
 

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 02:35:24PM +0000, Paul Johnson wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 14 December 2010 14:27, Richard W.M. Jones <rjones@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 02:07:37PM +0000, Paul Johnson wrote:
> >
> > > Is there a safe way to install the x86_64 system over the 32 bit version
> > and
> > > then clean off the 32 bit stuff that is no longer needed? If I was using
> > > f14, I'd just trash the drive and then install, but I've got things how I
> > > want them under rawhide.
> >
> > Not really. I would definitely suggest that you reinstall.
> >
> > I thought that would be the case - just wanted to check to ensure it's not
> something I can do another way.
>
> Okay, let's try another. Is there a way to grab a list of the packages
> installed and use a network installer to do the job based on the list?

I guess you can do:

rpm -qa --qf '%{name}
' > kickstart

and try to construct a kickstart file out of that ...

Rich.

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Safest way to go from x86 to x86_64
 

On Tue, 2010-12-14 at 14:07 +0000, Paul Johnson wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My main box decided to snuff it last week (motherboard and processor
> decided to fry). My erstwhile friend in the computer shop I use has
> said that he has a nice 64 bit processor and motherboard going for a
> small amount of money.
>
> The problem I have is that if I go the 64 bit route then I'll need to
> install the 64 bit OS (I can stay 32 bit, but what's the point with
> 8Gb of memory).
>
> Is there a safe way to install the x86_64 system over the 32 bit
> version and then clean off the 32 bit stuff that is no longer needed?

I did that to my Fedora 11 system in October 2009. It took a
significant amount of manual work and scripting and I hit a number of
minor issues. I'm not sure I would call the procedure "safe", but it
did work. The procedure was like this:

- Change /etc/rpm/platform to x86_64-redhat-linux and put
"%_transaction_color 3" in /etc/rpm/macros .
- Install the x86_64 kernel and boot to it.
- Install the x86_64 version of rpm.
- Construct a yum script with "install" lines for the x86_64 versions of
all installed packages. Repeatedly try to run the script and add
"erase" lines for any i?86 packages that cause file conflicts until it
succeeds.
- Watch the output. When scriptlets fail, fix things manually.
- Remove all unneeded i?86 packages. I needed to keep a few proprietary
packages that are only available for i?86, so I used a script to walk
the dependencies and figure out which i?86 packages could be removed.

YMMV with rawhide.

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Safest way to go from x86 to x86_64
 

Richard W.M. Jones (rjones@redhat.com) said:
> I guess you can do:
>
> rpm -qa --qf '%{name}
' > kickstart
>
> and try to construct a kickstart file out of that ...

Using 'show-installed' from rawhide yum-utils (works on earlier releases
if you copy the script over) can give you a more compact kickstart which
will be processed quicker.

Bill
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Safest way to go from x86 to x86_64
 

On 12/14/10 6:46 AM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 02:35:24PM +0000, Paul Johnson wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 14 December 2010 14:27, Richard W.M. Jones<rjones@redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 02:07:37PM +0000, Paul Johnson wrote:
>>>
>>>> Is there a safe way to install the x86_64 system over the 32 bit version
>>> and
>>>> then clean off the 32 bit stuff that is no longer needed? If I was using
>>>> f14, I'd just trash the drive and then install, but I've got things how I
>>>> want them under rawhide.
>>> Not really. I would definitely suggest that you reinstall.
>>>
>>> I thought that would be the case - just wanted to check to ensure it's not
>> something I can do another way.
>>
>> Okay, let's try another. Is there a way to grab a list of the packages
>> installed and use a network installer to do the job based on the list?
> I guess you can do:
>
> rpm -qa --qf '%{name}
'> kickstart
>
> and try to construct a kickstart file out of that ...
>
> Rich.
>

Also, use "rpm -Va" to get a list of config files that have been modified.

Unfortunately, there's no way to detect additional files (in /etc, etc) that aren't owned by a package but represent additional configuration state you might want to bring over.

I usually make a copy of config files (cp -p $file $file.orig) before I edit them the first time... then just do "locate .orig" to find them all.

-Philip


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Safest way to go from x86 to x86_64
 

On Tue, 2010-12-14 at 10:47 -0800, Philip Prindeville wrote:
> On 12/14/10 6:46 AM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 02:35:24PM +0000, Paul Johnson wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> On 14 December 2010 14:27, Richard W.M. Jones<rjones@redhat.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 02:07:37PM +0000, Paul Johnson wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Is there a safe way to install the x86_64 system over the 32 bit version
> >>> and
> >>>> then clean off the 32 bit stuff that is no longer needed? If I was using
> >>>> f14, I'd just trash the drive and then install, but I've got things how I
> >>>> want them under rawhide.
> >>> Not really. I would definitely suggest that you reinstall.
> >>>
> >>> I thought that would be the case - just wanted to check to ensure it's not
> >> something I can do another way.
> >>
> >> Okay, let's try another. Is there a way to grab a list of the packages
> >> installed and use a network installer to do the job based on the list?
> > I guess you can do:
> >
> > rpm -qa --qf '%{name}
'> kickstart
> >
> > and try to construct a kickstart file out of that ...
> >
> > Rich.
> >
>
> Also, use "rpm -Va" to get a list of config files that have been modified.
>
> Unfortunately, there's no way to detect additional files (in /etc, etc) that aren't owned by a package but represent additional configuration state you might want to bring over.
>
> I usually make a copy of config files (cp -p $file $file.orig) before I edit them the first time... then just do "locate .orig" to find them all.

Sure you can:

for file in `find /etc`
do
rpm -qf $file > /dev/null
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
echo $file unowned
fi
done

-sv


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Safest way to go from x86 to x86_64
 

Paul Johnson <paul@all-the-johnsons.co.uk> writes:

> Is there a safe way to install the x86_64 system over the 32 bit version
> and then clean off the 32 bit stuff that is no longer needed?

There is no safe way to do it, but it IS in fact possible. I have done
it twice.

It is a lot of work, and I recommend against it. However, where is the
fun in life if you do not do something impossible once in a while?

First of all you need a 64-bit kernel on there (not so difficult; you
can just do rpm -i --ignorearch ...) Then you need to create a
repository file containing the relevant 64-bit repositories in
/etc/yum.repos.d/.

It is a bit difficult getting started because yum will complain about
duplicate files when you install some x86_64 packages over i386
packages. You can get around that by letting yum fetch the files and rpm
--replacefiles.

There is a risk of overwriting something vitally important and rendering
the i386 part of your system useless before you have a viable x86_64
system. Have a rescue disk handy. Other challenges can be that you cannot
necessarily trust the RPM database to survive the architecture change.
You may have to manually remove /var/lib/rpm/__* and do a rebuilddb. Or
reinstall from backup if that fails.

You will also hit some cases where yum gives up in ways that it asks you
to report to the maintainers. I have not actually reported those to the
maintainers because I imagine that this is a highly unsupported use of
yum. You can get around the problems with rpm --replacefiles and similar
tricks.

Again, do not do this if you are not prepared to lose all your data.


/Benny

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