Is FreeBSD i386 64bit?

[Bill Moran]

On Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:56:06 +0200
"Sandra Kachelmann" <s.kachelmann at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Coming from the Linux world I am pretty new to FreeBSD, please bare with me.
> I find the FreeBSD handbook pretty useful and I just managed to update
> 7.0-RELEASE to 7-STABLE from source. I have an Intel core4quad CPU and was
> wondering if I now have a 64bit FreeBSD. I am a bit confused because from
> /usr/src/sys/ I only see the directories amd64, ia64 and sparc64 with the
> number 64 in it.

The source tree has the code for both the i386 (32-bit) and various 64-bit
OS in it.  So the source tree can be used to compile the 64-bit version, but
it doesn't give you any indication of what version you actually have
installed.

The output of 'uname -a' will tell you what your currently running system
is.  If it says i386, then you're running the 32-bit version, if it says
amd64, you're running the 64-bit version.  Note that Intel chips use
amd64, despite the fact that it has AMD in the name.

> Another question, is setting CPUTYPE advised or discouraged? I am aware
> about problems if you mix binaries built with different CPU flags; not a
> problem for me because coming from Gentoo I am used to build everything
> myself.

I've never had any trouble setting CPUTYPE, unless I set it to an incorrect
value.