migration to 64bit ?

[Lucio M Nicolosi]

Loïc Martin wrote:
> ' =JeffH ' wrote:
>   
>> I've been reading through the various 64bit threads with interest. I'm on a 
>> core2duo machine, presently running 32bit.
>>
>> My overall question is what are the (detailed) steps would one take to migrate 
>> a system from, say, 32bit Ubuntu 8.04 LTS ("Hardy Heron") to 64bit Hardy?
>>     
> I'm not an expert on the subject of migration, but I don't think people
> mean going from i386 to amd64 when they say you can upgrade.
>
> The safest route, and the one that is also useful long-term, is to have
> two releases installed at a time. If you made the mistake to only have
> one big partition instead of an OS partition and at least one data
> partition, you can resize quite safely with gparted or a tool like that,
> then create new partitions, and install the amd64 version on one of the
> new partitions.
>
> You can either put your home on a separate partition, or just copy/paste
> your important files in Hardy i386 (even easier if your keep most of
> your data on a separate partition. If you got any trouble, the i386
> partition is still there if you want to pick some configuration files
> you tweaked, and in the even you harm your system one day, you just
> reboot on the second OS and can keep working without any downtime.
>
>   
>> My video card is nVidia, and it appears they have a 64bit linux driver. As 
>> threads here have indicated, there is now 64bit support for Flash, Java, etc. 
>> So those main items are apparently addressed.
>>     
> For Hardy, you'd use 32 bit flash through ndiswrapper, which is not hard
> to setup, but far from stellar. If it doesn't work well enough for you,
> Jaunty has the new 64 bit flash from Adobe, and Intrepid has unofficial
> backported 64 bit flash, both releases would work better (wait till
> April for Jaunty).
>
> Java on amd64 isn't all perfect, but for some people it works without a
> glitch - just depends the sites you use. The situation is improving, and
>  Intrepid gives better results than Hardy, Jaunty better than Intrepid
> (Jaunty is almost identical, I only found a really small presentation
> error that didn't prevent the use of the complex applet I tried).
>
>   
>> One item that hasn't really been discussed is virtual machines: I presently 
>> use vmware v6 to run at least one guest OS (winXP), and sometimes linux VMs. 
>> In looking at VMware's site, it seems that they've had 64bit support for a 
>> while now, and one can run 32bit guest OS's on 64bit host OS's, so that 
>> appears to be just a matter of downloading the x86_64 installer, yes?
>>     
>
> Whatever your solution you'll have a 64 bit version of the program you
> use, and you can run 32 or 64 bit versions without trouble. With a good
> processor, having a 32 bit VM of Ubuntu would ease your doubts, even if
> you didn't have to use it - you'll know that were you to face a little
> problem, you could still run the VM and get it over with.
>
> Loïc
>
>
>   
Resuming:

- It seems there is no upgrading path between i386 and 64, so 
"migration" is not possible if this is the meaning. You will need a 
fresh install of some kind.

- If you already have a /home partition and enough HD space you can 
install a new Ubuntu 64 instance using the same /home partition and 
double boot between the two installations.

- If your /home do not reside at an independent partition, it is a good 
time to create one (always providing you have available disk space) and 
migrate your personal data to this new area.

- Notice that some applications will have to be reinstalled because will 
not run with the same parameters eventually placed at a shared 
/home/[user]). (I cannot run VirtualBox and the guest OSs from my 64 
partition because it was installed and configured under i386 - I have no 
experience with VmWare).

- I'm running 8.10 on a barely supported hardware (NVidia 8200) and the 
video drivers worked almost out of the box for 8.04 i386 - 8.10 i386 - 
8.10 64. Also no problems with Adobe Flash 64 Beta.

L.

-- 
Lucio M. Nicolosi, Eng.
São Paulo - Brazil

email: lmnicolosi at gmail.com
phone: 55 11 8272 6512

Linux Registered User #481505
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