Advice for "crossgrading" from 32 bit F11 to x64 ?

Clint Dilks clintd at scms.waikato.ac.nz
Wed Sep 30 02:56:05 UTC 2009


Linuxguy123 wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-09-29 at 19:29 -0700, Kam Leo wrote:
>   
>> On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:20 PM, Linuxguy123 <linuxguy123 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> I do a lot of photo processing... things like generating 200 jpgs from
>>> raw files at one go.   My laptop has 4GB of RAM but is currently only
>>> using 3GB because I am running a 32 bit kernel.
>>>
>>> uname -a
>>> Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.30.8-64.fc11.i586 #1 SMP Fri Sep 25
>>> 04:30:19 EDT 2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
>>>
>>> Sooner or later I want to upgrade to a 64 bit kernel and 8 GB of RAM.
>>> Other than this article, I can't find any information on the subject.
>>>
>>> http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/123800
>>>
>>> I am looking to do the upgrade WITHOUT reinstalling Fedora.  I've done
>>> enough re installations in the past to know that I don't want to go
>>> there.
>>>
>>> Has anyone done crossgraded from 32 to 64 bit ?  What advice do you have
>>> to offer ?
>>>       
>> Have you really done enough upgrades? I think not.  If you did, you
>> would know that the best advice is to back up your files and perform a
>> clean install.
>>     
>
> No, that is NOT the best choice.  I've re installed clean more than 4x
> and its a BIG pain setting things up again.  I have a lot of software
> installed and not all of it is a simple yum command, ie custom versions
> of Eclipse, java, etc.
>
> Just like we shouldn't be telling everyone to do a 'yum clean all' when
> its not necessary, nor should we be telling people to reinstall. 
>
>   
Honestly unless you are very experienced with 64 Bit systems, then I 
would suggest a clean install.

If you really won't consider this then I would suggest that you free up 
some hard drive  space so that you can create a new partition.  Then do 
a minimal 64 Bit install to this partition almost like you wanted a Dual 
Boot setup.  Then you can work through migrating your data or work out a 
way to use the data in place.

I haven't specifically does this with Fedora, but I have with CentOS.  
If you compile your own software I strongly suggest you experiment with 
this to ensure that 64 Bit libraries are found when you expect them to 
be rather than the system finding 32 Bit Libraries First.

Good Luck




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