Transition from AthlonXP to Athlon 64 X2

[Hyper_Eye]

I am upgrading my machine from an Athlon XP 3200+ to an Athlon 64 X2 AM2 6000+. I am curious as to what is best to make this transition. From what I have read there is not much benefit in using a 64-bit OS over a 32-bit OS and that, in the case of Linux, there are still pitfalls in running 64-bit (such as flash.) I currently have my system compiled with march=athlon-xp. Is this suitable for an Athlon 64? This is what I intend to do in order to keep my current system without having to do a recompile:

1) Install new hardware (mobo, cpu, memory, vid.)

2) Boot with Live Disk (as I have my kernel configured for current mobo.)

3) Note the modules loaded by the Live disk for the new mobo.

4) Mount my software RAID (this is one part I am worried about as the mobos use two different SATA controllers. I am not to worried about being able to do it with the new SATA controller since it is software RAID but I am concerned that the drives won't be using the same drive letters and that my RAID config will not be proper. Any recommendations here are appreciated.)

5) chroot my system.

6) Configure kernel. Remove old mobo settings and enable new mobos settings. (Can I leave my CPU as an AthlonXP here? If I am not compiling for 64-bit that is what I want to leave it at anyway right? Or should I set it to Athlon64 even though I am running 32-bit?)

7) Compile new kernel and move it into boot partition.

Reboot and cross my fingers.

Would this be the best way to go about it or is there a better way to do this without starting from scratch? Thanks.
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[Rob1n]

[molot]

[taliesin]

Hi

I'm not much of a Gentoo expert, Just to add my two cents,

I run AMD64 system and use firefox-bin ( the 32-bit version) and 32bit flash and they work quite well together. If that is the only thing stopping you to goto a 64bit system.

Also with a x64 system, all your 32bit applications will still work, though I think you need an additional 32 bit libraries.

There is also a way to compile 32bit applications from the 64it system for packages which don't compile or run to well in the 64bit environment. I cant remember it now though as I haven't had any problems lately

[Hyper_Eye]

Thanks for the info so far. I am also considering going to 64-bit. I have not made up my mind on this yet. If I were to go to 64-bit I see two ways to do it... back-up what I need to keep and compile fresh or recompile my system for 64-bit. If I do the first method I am going to need to record my world tree hopefully in a way that will make getting back to my current system easy. I would prefer to do a world recompile to move my whole system to 64-bit. I have been using Gentoo for a number of years now and am quite familiar with portage but I have never changed architectures like this. What would be the best way to get my system recompiled for athlon 64 without starting from scratch and without too much mess? If it seems worth doing then I will do it but I really want to avoid backing up everything I have as I am looking at almost 100 gigs that I need to keep.
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[Rob1n]

[Cyker]

Going from 32-bit to 64 is a platform change, almost like going from x86 to Sun/SGI - It's probably less work to do a full re-install

I did a similar upgrade path from AthlonXP to Athlon64 - You just need to change hardware drivers/settings to match the new hardware, re-compile the kernel and then perform the hardware upgrade and almost everything will still work. There's inevitably a few things you'll miss (It was lm_sensors for me ), but such an upgrade can be mch MUCH easier than doing it in Windows (Which REQUIRES you to do a full re-install if you want any stability...)

BTW, whoever said to keep your CPU as AthlonXP is wrong - 32bit or 64bit, you can set the -march=k8, and in the kernel select Opteron/Athlon64/Hammer/K8 as the CPU.
You can't switch from 64-bit to 32-bit just by setting a few options in the kernel - The CHOST and toolchain need to be 64-bit, which is why going 32->64 requires a complete from-scratch re-install.

[molot]

[taliesin]

For upgrading to a x64 system

How about booting of a live cd, extracting the x86_64 base to / , then doing an

emerge -e system; emerge -e world

Or would this leave too much behind?

[molot]

It would make a total mess with the current system. Some time ago I've deleted gcc's files from my system (by stupid accident - I've ran livecd cleaning script on my os instead of on livecd source dir), and I've tried unpacking stage to a root dir. Never ever again. Just don't. After that step I simply had to proceed with clean install.. So if mess and then clean install is on one side, and clean install on the other, choice seems simple ;D
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[taliesin]

[Cyker]

[molot]

[Cyker]

Oh! I think I understand the confusion - Some clarification:

1) By selecting Athlon64/K8 in the kernel configs, you will NOT automatically make a 64-bit kernel. You can only make a 64-bit kernel from a 64-bit tool-chain.
2) You can NOT compile ANYTHING as 64-bit from a 32-bit system without setting up 64-bit cross-compiling, which is complicated.

Note that I am ONLY talking about CPU optimization flags - I agree that having a 64-bit kernel with 32-bit userland is rather pointless, since there is little to no benefit (Esp. since you can tell the kernel to use 64-bit structures without turning it into a 'true' 64-bit kernel!)

[Akkara]

The easiest is to just use the system you currently have. Just change -march to k8. You can recompile if you want but it is not needed. Can let the updates slowly change your system over, or maybe recompile the packages you use a lot if you don't want to spend a lot of time on doing emerge -e world

If you have a spare partition that's big enough, can try to set up amd64 there. This way if something goes wrong, or if it takes longer than expected you're not left without a machine. Also if you decide you don't like 64-bits as much can fall back to your 32.

[Mgiese]

i am a bit confused right know .. i switched from pentium3-1000 to amd64x2. i changed my profile to amd64, changed chost to "x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" (before it was "i686-pc-linux-gnu") then i also changed -march to k8. i recompiled my kernel (added k8 support an some drivers). but now glibc doesnt compile anymore. i know i have to rebuild toolchain (wasnt that emerge -e system?) and later i have to rebuild world. will this be possible ? thx a lot in advance


my glibc error is the following :

[merky1]

[Mgiese]

hi, i installed my whole system new(amd64 2007) its working so fine now, i compiled everything what i need, and thx portage i also installed all the 32bit software without doing anything in extra. gentoo is so nice

thx to the devs
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[mu-sly]

Hey folks, I have a similar question.

I'm about to move my entire system from an AthlonXP to Athlon64. Need to do a bit of urgent-ish computer reshuffling, so it can't wait too much longer - ultimately, I need to try and do the bulk of the hardware shuffling this weekend.

For the moment, I just need my stuff to carry on working but on the new machine. Assuming I build the right kernel drivers for the new motherboard and so on, should my system (as set up for AthlonXP) continue to work on an Athlon64 processor in 32-bit mode?

Later, when I have a bit more time, I'd like to clean out and recompile everything to have a 64-bit system, but for the moment I'm hoping I can more-or-less just run my AthlonXP optimised stuff on Athlon64.

Is it almost certain to work? Fairly likely to work? Go badly wrong? Should I really just go the full way and do a clean reinstall to 64-bit straight away?

Is march=k8 applicable in 32-bit mode? (Where do I find this stuff out, I'm not actually sure!? It's been literally years since I set this system up and nothing like that has ever needed changing!)

Finally, when I do the 64-bit switch properly, I'd like to recompile more-or-less the same bunch of apps I've already got emerged. What's the best way to get this information? I'm assuming emerge can give it to me somehow, and then I could just echo it into a text file and run the command on my newly cleaned out and reinstalled base system?

I'm hoping to go the multiple-partitions route (32-bit and 64-bit, until 64-bit is working right) as suggested by Akkara.

Thanks for your help!
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[Cyker]

Going from AthlonXP to Athlon64 will work perfectly - The Ath64 is fully backward compatible with all the extra instructions the AthlonXP supports.

Yes, -march=k8 is totally applicable in 32-bit.

The main thing you need to do is re-compile the kernel with the correct hardware drivers (Chipset, disk controllers, NIC, USB, lm_sensors, sound, etc. etc.) for the new motherboard and any other hardware.

When I did it, I saved it as a different kernel and added it to GRUB so that I could still use the old system, and when I moved the hardware over I just had to pick the new kernel in the GRUB menu.

The only other things are general hardware tweaking - e.g. modifying the fstab and udev to match your new system if needed, changing lm_sensors config to point to the new sensor chips, possibly re-compiling video drivers etc.


If you want quick, this is the fastest way.

'Converting' from an AthlonXP to Athlon64/AMD64 pretty much requires a complete from-scratch rebuild. You can't recycle anything beyond most of /etc, and even then you'll need to screen everything really carefully JIC, so you may as well re-write them using the old /etc's as a base.

[mu-sly]

[Cyker]

To my knowledge, there isn't a quick and easy way of converting from 32 to 64bit x86.

Your idea of dumping the package list is basically the usual way of doing it.


Others ways have been suggested, but they all sound messy enough to defeat the point of the suggestion



I may be considering travelling that road once an AMD64 version of Opera comes out, but we'll see

Right now 'tho I haven't found a compelling reason to put down the time to 'upgrade' to AMD64 yet, but have many good reasons not too (e.g. I'm lazy, I can't afford >3GB RAM, I run lots of 32-bit binary software like NWN, RAR, Opera etc...)

[darklegion]