>>>>> Brad Alexander <stor...@gmail.com> writes:
[…]
> Well, now 64bit is as stable as 32bit, and I want to upgrade my
> machine to 64bit userland. Is there a reliable way to upgrade
> existing packages? Or is a complete rebuild ("nuke and pave") the
> best way?
[…]
> Is there some middle ground?
It seem that there's one.
But first of all, there's a precondition: there must be an LVM
volume group with enough spare space for a new system. Also, it
helps if the user (/home) and system (/, /boot, /usr, /var,
etc.) directories are on distinct filesystems. (Both of those
hold for virtually any system under my control.)
Given that the above holds, I'd create new LVM logical volumes
for the new system, e. g.:
# vg=vgmysystem
# lvcreate -L 256M -n lvroot64 "$vg"
# lvcreate -L 4G -n lvusr64 "$vg"
# lvcreate -L 4G -n lvvar64 "$vg"
#
Then, I'd create the filesystems on these new volumes, say:
# mke2fs -j -E resize=1G /dev/"$vg"/lvroot64
…
# mke2fs -j -E resize=8G /dev/"$vg"/lvusr64
…
# mke2fs -j -E resize=64G /dev/"$vg"/lvvar64
…
#
and mount these filesystems, and also tmpfs, to /mnt, e. g.:
# mount /dev/"$vg"/lvroot64 /mnt
# mkdir -- /mnt/usr /mnt/var
# install -d -m 01777 -- /mnt/tmp
# mount /dev/"$vg"/lvusr64 /mnt/usr
# mount /dev/"$vg"/lvvar64 /mnt/var
# mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /mnt/tmp
#
(I assume that both the old and the new system will share the
same /home, but /home isn't needed at this time.)
Finally, I'd debootstrap(8) the amd64 system into /mnt (I assume
that the i386 host system is used along with the amd64 kernel),
make all the necessary changes to /etc, chroot(8) to /mnt to
test the new setup, and then add the necessary bits to the GRUB
configuration.
After the above is done, I could boot either of the systems.
And if anything fails badly with one, I could still use the
other (e. g., for recovery.)
BTW, “rescue” or, say, “newstable”, OS versions may be installed
essentially the same way.
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