i386 with 4GB RAM: less than 2GB available on A2SAV (Intel Atom E3940)

[Eugene Grosbein]

On 30.01.2018 13:59, Andre Albsmeier wrote:

>> Also, I'd like to know reasons that made you stick to 32 bit OS
>> as we have pretty good support for 32 bit applications running under 64 bit system.
> 
> I (still) have 32 bit machines and don't want to maintain 2 userlands.
> Each machine has its own kernel but userland (updated via nfs) must
> remain 32 bit.
> 
> Or is it possible to boot a 64 bit kernel and have everything else in
> 32 bit?

I have not tried "everything else in 32 bit", there may be some rough edges
dealing with run-time linker but you can try.

/sbin/init is statically linked and it should work with kernel having option COMPAT_FREEBSD32.
/bin/sh may be OK too provided /libexec/ld-elf32.so.1 is in place.

You should really consider switching to 64 bit kernel for such hardware.