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Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 11:12:43 -0800
From: "David Marshall" <dmarshall@gmail.com>
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References: <45475298.5090709@inoc.net>
Subject: Re: 6.x from i386 to amd64
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On 10/31/06, Robert Blayzor <rblayzor@inoc.net> wrote:
> Is there a way to upgrade/move an already installed i386 installed 6.1
> machine to amd64 without completely reinstalling?  Is there a procedure
> to do so?
>

I spent all of last weekend trying to do this, with no solution
determined.  I read a couple of methods for doing this without
reinstalling, but both indicated that a lot of know-how was needed and
that the methods were neither complete nor bullet-proof.  They both
required access to the server to do magic things in single-user mode,
which isn't available to me.

For our purposes, I have decided to keep the machines as i386.  I have
two servers with identical hardware.  One has 6.1/amd64, and the other
has 6.1/i386.  The i386 has a better ubench score.  More importantly
for us, it's impossible to build a 32-bit perl on the amd64, and we
don't need a 64-bit perl.  Our apache/mod_perl servers are 3X bigger
on the amd64, and that is unsatisfactory.