Upgrading from 32 bit to 64 bit

[Harold Hallikainen]

> On Thu, 2006-09-07 at 14:11 -0700, Harold Hallikainen wrote:
>> > On Thu, 2006-09-07 at 10:32 -0700, Waldher, Travis R wrote:
>> >> What is involved for Redhat AS 4.0?
>> >>
>> >> The system was initially built 32bit, but some users would like it
>> >> running in 64.
>> >>
>> >> Is it as simple as loading a different kernel? :fingerscrossed:
>> >
>> > Well, yeah, but most of your applications won't be accelerated that
>> > much.  A full 64-bit system will have most of the utilities (/bin,
>> > /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, etc.) built with 64-bit as well as having
>> > full 64-bit libraries (/usr/lib64 as well as /usr/lib).
>> >
>> > Can you run a 64-bit kernel with 32-bit utilities?  Sure.  Will it buy
>> > you much?  Not really.  For example, I run an Opteron at home with
>> full
>> > FC5 64-bit stuff.  Real grunt work (compilations, OpenOffice, etc.)
>> are
>> > MUCH faster under 64-bit.
>> >
>> > I do run some 32-bit apps on it, however.  Some examples are: 32-bit
>> > firefox so I can have Flash (there's no Flash plugin for 64-bit),
>> Skype
>> > (no 64-bit version available), and Opera (same thing). They work fine
>> > and do seem a bit faster, but that's a purely subjective opinion.
>> I've
>> > done no benchmarking on them.  Your mileage may vary.  It won't hurt
>> to
>> > try running a 64-bit kernel and see what you think.  You can always
>> boot
>> > the 32-bit one if you don't care for it.
>> >
>>
>>
>> I'm also running FC5-64 and have run into the lack of a Flash plug-in.
>> What do I do to uninstall the 64 bit FireFox and put in 32 bit, the
>> flash
>> plug-in, etc? Can yum do it? When I try to install Flash, the script
>> seems
>> to do an OS check and then complain about it being 64 bit. How do you
>> get
>> around that? For VoIP, I just installed the latest Gizmo Project, and it
>> seems to work fine.
>
> I kept the 64-bit FireFox.  I just downloaded the 32-bit RPM and did an
> "rpm -ivh --force /path/to/32-bit/rpm/firefox.whatever.rpm".  Then I
> grabbed the Flash player and buggered the OS detection bit of their
> install script.  Look in the installer script for a call to "uname -m".
> Then add a clause that duplicates the i686 stuff.  It'll be around line
> 252.  Here's how I modified it:
>
> 	TEMPARCH=`uname -m`
> 	case $TEMPARCH in
> 		i[3456]86)
> 			ARCH=i386
> 			;;
> NEW->		x86_64)
> NEW->			ARCH=i386
> NEW->			;;
>
> Then run the installer as normal.  When it asks you where to install
> the FLASH player, specify "/usr/lib/firefox".
>
> Then I added a new icon to the desktop that specifically runs
> /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin and labeled it "Firefox (32-bit)".  Voila!
> Click on the original icon, you get 64-bit Firefox.  Click on the new
> one and you get 32-bit Firefox with Flash.
>
> If you like, delete the old icon.  I like having both.  Actually, I have
> four...mozilla (64-bit), firefox (64- and 32-bit), and Opera (32-bit).
> Ah, decisions...decisions! :-)
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -


Works great! I can now see Flash! I put the 32 bit Firefox in
/usr/bin32/firefox . The Mozilla site had a gz instead of an rpm, so
untarred it in /usr/bin32/firefox. On the Flash installer script, I just
commented out the exit in the architecture check, so the script continued
on instead of exiting on finding the 64 bit architecture.

Thanks!

Harold

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