Is it possible to switch to 64bit from 32bit?

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#1 Wed, 04/23/2014 - 07:36

amityweb

Is it possible to switch to 64bit from 32bit?

I would like to upgrade my servers to 64bit, most are 32bit at the moment.

Linode make it look easy https://library.linode.com/switching-kernels.

If I did this, would Virtualmin/Webmin be fine? It says I can just update yum to download 64bit updates, so wondered if this would work smoothly or would there be issues/not possible.

I would of course clone an existing server for a test to do it on, to make sure all works OK first.

Thanks

#2 Wed, 04/23/2014 - 08:27

andreychek

Howdy,

What you're describing will indeed work -- note though that what you're doing is using a 64 bit kernel on a 32 bit distro.

It's not fully 64 bit, and there's no simple way to convert all your packages to 64 packages.

That doesn't matter -- you can use a 64 bit kernel on a 32 bit OS. And Virtualmin will work just fine with that.

But what they're explaining in the docs you mentioned regarding yum is that you need to configure it to not install 64 bit packages... you need to configure it to continue pulling down 32 bit packages.

By default, yum uses your kernel type to determine whether it should be pulling in 32 or 64 bit packages. If you switch to a 64 bit kernel with 32 bit packages, and it starts mixing package architectures, you could start running into some troubles.

If you configure yum to look for 32 bit packages, it should work great!

-Eric

#3 Wed, 04/23/2014 - 10:06

amityweb

Ahhh, right. Ok I understand. I didn't get it from the Linode information but now I do. I dont feel comfortable mixing 32 and 64bit so may not do it now. Ideally I would want a full 64bit system so would create a second server and move accounts over from one to the other.

Thanks for the info

#4 Wed, 09/03/2014 - 02:43 (Reply to #3)

nibb

No, that just uses a 64 bit kernel, everything else is still 32 bit in your system.

While you could replace packages manually its a pain to do so... You are going to have all types of problems, packet conflicts, issues, etc. I had by mistake 32 bits RPM with 64 bits packets mixed before and its a disaster.

This is why there is no way to do what you want without having to do a full re-installation. You will need to install a system running in 64 bits and then move your data over that system. This is the same for Windows or any other operating system/computer running 32 bits. You can't just upgrade Windows either from those versions, you need to do a full operating system installation and that is what most people will suggest to do.

You should take another Linode running 64 bits and move your data over it. Then kill the old system.

#5 Wed, 09/03/2014 - 07:50

amityweb

Hi nibb, thanks. I have already moved all date to a new 64bit server.

With Linode you can swap IP addresses, and with Virtualmin you can have server replication to backup and restore all servers to a new server. So I setup a new 64bit server and used replication to copy all servers across, then switched IP addresses in Linode so I dont have to mess with DNS of the domains on the server (theres about 80 domains on it). All went OK. I did have an issue with httpd.conf messing up, reported in another thread, but I fixed that. So all working OK now.

#6 Fri, 09/05/2014 - 07:43

andersonsmith

Hi guys

Thanks for providing me the information. A Few days ago, i am searching about it through search engine, found some articles but not satisfied.

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