Upgrading an i386 machine from amd64.

[Stefan Esser]

Am 01.06.2014 23:06, schrieb Nathan Whitehorn:> On 06/01/14 13:47, Xin
Li wrote:
>> On 6/1/14, 11:56 AM, Nathan Whitehorn wrote:
>>> Usually the strategy is to update the kernel first, since you can
>>> use an amd64 kernel with i386 world. Then you reboot, then replace
>>> world.
>> That will not work well about a year ago and I don't think things
>> have been improved since then.
>>
>> The biggest problem was that some system management API (e.g. for use
>> with ifconfig(8) or dhclient(8) I don't remember the details) do not
>> have proper 32-bit ABI implementations.  It would be great if we can
>> have them fixed though.
>>
>
> Huh. It works great on PowerPC with 64-bit kernels and 32-bit worlds >
-- has for years. I assumed i386 would be the same way. In any case, I
> guess it's enough to get into single user mode and run installworld?

It worked when I moved a system from i386 to amd64, some time back
(during 10-CURRENT).

No extra steps where required, AFAICR, but I created ZFS snapshots of
all i386 files systems, just to be sure there was an easy fall-back
path (without resorting to backups). And I kept the 32 bit version of
/rescue under /rescue32, just in case ...

It has been some time and I have not recently retried it - but I could
start a buildworld in a i386 jail to see whether it runs to completion
and produces amd64 binaries and libraries.

But you could try this on your system as easily ... ;-)

Regards, STefan