upgrading to 64 bit – done

this is now done, i did a new install only using the root partition and then added /home partition back in afterward.

i’m on debian jessie 8.3 as its updated frequently on an lenovo i7 laptop.
i’ve upgraded/re-installed distro’s before, usually i copy & tgz at least /etc and /root beforehand, leave /home on root partition and then firtle it in fstab.

is anyone aware of any problems that might occur re STM32 post upgrading(arduino?? arm-none-*??) by following/being guided by one or more of these

https://wiki.debian.org/Migrate32To64Bit
http://www.ewan.cc/?q=node/90
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions … -to-64-bit

worst case would be a re-install, i’ll probably first try the upgrade on my i5 laptop.
pretty sure i’ll not need to recompile dfu-utils and will need lib32bit support installed

background
i keep running into program wrong bin format error, in this case a purchased frontend to calibre, distinctly disappointed in the support so far. i think it would be classed as poor in a windows world.
last time i tried calibre it renamed/renumbered anything in its ‘supported format’ list and moved it all, not funny.

i booted an unetbootin install to usb stick of debian-live-8.3.0-amd64-xfce-desktop.iso, only alternative was i386 – nope
well live distro ran and everything i ran file on reported on was 64 bit.
the frontend gave me messed up windows, overlapped text, menus, windows and frames.

stephen

I am running 64-bit Linux Mint 17.3 on an Acer dual-core Intel with 4G RAM and 320G hard disk. It is not a speed demon, but it gets the job done. On my Compaq notebook, it is 32-bit 17.2 Mint with 2G.

Personally, I have never tried a 32 —> 64 in place upgrade. Is there a compelling (required) reason you want to do this? My gut tells me that you are probably going to be better off backing up data, wiping the machine and installing 64-bit from DVD, then restoring applications and data… but, that is only a guess… upgrade may work fine. But you probably need a full, current, backup anyway

Ray

I’ve did an upgrade several years ago, and things messed up.
Since then, I always do a fresh install on separate disk and when I feel new version working fine, I reformat the older disk after having done a backup of its essential.

i just have /, /home and swap partitions.
with a clean install, i don’t allocate a partition for /home, then i fiddle fstab, copy the saved /etc/host* files over is about it, except for the minor items, joe, mc, geany(all), then all the one’s i just like available and then the forgotten ones, pull /etc files from the etc_i7.tgz for geda stuff et al.

currently i7 is copying 260gb of i5 files from a usb3 hdd to main hdd, then i’ll leave the usb hdd in, boot the usb stick and try the install option with the usb 1tb hdd as target, round the loop and try booting from usb hdd.
i’ve a good couple of hours to wait, so its either iceweasel for on-demand tv or read the kindle.
116GB after 50mins

i7 has a strange HD screen, i had to lookup how to work around it to get a readable screen, 3840 x 2160-pixel – minuscule character size in gnome istr, xfce i fiddled with although for the login screen i know what to type then it switches to readable size..
of course i could just use i5 and decide which x64 debian desktop variant (4) dvd to insert, i5 doesn’t boot usb and i7 doesn’t have a dvd. i’ve both usb2 and usb3 dvd drives and sometime there’s that 260gb to go back to one of the usb1tb hdd’s….

so far the last 3 go to sleep times are 0500, 0730 & 0800, well at least no lectures to go to, how did i do it back then?

stephen

zmemw16 wrote:<…> how did i do it back then?

stephen

My main home machine is currently running Linux Mint 17.3 64-bit. It was running 17.1 64-bit up until a month or so ago. A bad update left me with an unbootable system (my bad for using an officially unsupported encrypted LVM configuration for the OS file systems). Because:

1) I kept /home completely separate from the OS
2) I kept notes on which packages had been installed and in what order

Recovery consisted of:

a) Booting from a Live DVD
b) Backing up the relatively small OS file systems to another machine just in case
c) Performing a fresh 17.3 installation
d) Re-installing the previously installed packages
e) Remount /home

If you generally stick with 1) and 2) any re-installation you have to do (bad upgrade, want to switch from 32 to 64 bits, want to switch distributions) should be relatively painless.

IMHO its generally not practical to attempt to do these sort of major updates on any OS.

I have tried upgrading OSX and Windows, and the resultant system always had issues.

Its far better to buy a new HD (or erase an old HD ) and do a clean install.
That way you can always change disks back to the old one if necessary.

Or put connect your old disk as additional disk and copy your document files to your new disk.

I know this means reinstalling all your programs, but I think this is just the price you hVe to pay for dating and getting a nice clean fast new system.

@Roger
never thought of it that way, i assume you mean updating

well it only took about 4hrs for that 260gb across usb3.

allocated slightly larger but identical as in sdX 1, 6 & 7 partitions.
it’s just finished 45mins back installing jessie 8.3 x64 xfce to the usb3 harddrive, 5 partitions flagged as ‘do not use this partitions’ just to keep it away from this installation and the target /home. evidently that bit worked.

JIT for MOTD at 2230
for some reason i’m looking for MOTD on a friday, its saturdays football – oops

tomorrow i’ll try booting that x64 harddrive for real, first is configure screen if i need to, then apt-get install joe mc geany

then i might just re-install the i5 laptop

no one’s actually mentioned any problems wrt arduino_stm32.

stephen

@zmemw16

Invariably, I end up needing to run the machine in its pre-upgraded state, so I find it far safer to keep the original disk that it booted from

I keep thinking I can simply copy the files to my new machine, but there always (at least on Windows) ends up being some complex config that I didn’t realise had happened on my old machine, and I can’t get to work on my new one.

So having access to the “old machine” even if it is just booting off the old HD on the same motherboard, is a handy fallback

I don’t really care how long it takes to copy the data. Just leave it running overnight, and it can take 8 hours of more if necessary.

actually on going to 64 bits, is it an upgrade?
does adding a 64bit kernel pull in all the other 64bit things needed?

pretty sure i’ve topped 8hrs, certainly across home network – always hard wired. 1/10 days, maybe 10/100 as well

one minor problem with the Dell i5, usb ports are defunct. i seriously dislike the touch thingey, i’m always faster with the rodent. can you run a remote mouse?
not very useful for arduino then!

home is now sda3, added in fstab using partition notation, not UUID. couldn’t figure out what that partitions uuid was.
i’ve a seriously large number of missing desktop images.

synaptic ain’t going to be fun … maybe i can get tightvnc going, never tried with a relatively clean system before.

stephen

@stephen: the process sounds overly painful. 64-bit Linux Mint 17.3 installed on an old (2008) Acer Aspire and all the necessity drivers for touch, volume, WiFi, etc. were included at installation… the P&P USB 1.1/2.0 ports all work well, WiFi is solid.

Now, on my old Dell 610, I trued several more “steril” Linux installs which did not include proprietary drivers and the notebook was darn near useless until I spent several hours coercing driver installs – too painful for my tastes.

Ray

@Ray
i’ve a Dell 6xx laptop as well, solely for its lpt port – got it to use for LinuxCnc.

actually the i5 install was simple, it has a cdrom built in. it’s usb ports are either defunct or its like getting 3 numbers on the lottery when they work.
the main problem is no mouse, but the tab key works well. the debian ‘graphical’ install is nicely behaved in that regard.

my i7 laptop is a big thing to me, messing up my main system would rather annoy me.
real problem is its screen pixel size, also the hdd is a hybrid ssd as well.
obviously i’ve done it before, but that was quite awhile ago and it’s now rather faint.

again no negatives about stm32 have been mentioned, so it’ll happen.
maybe after MOTD
stephen

zmemw16 wrote:pretty sure i’ll not need to recompile dfu-utils and will need lib32bit support installed

pretty much painless, i just installed the root and left off the home partition.
hosts, hosts.allow, host.deny, exports and edit fstab to add home.
i may very well leave the wifi interface out as it always only seems to last about 10-15mins; so i now always switch to lan before i let iceweasel go mad restoring windows.

of course, one thing i forgot – flash! itv and bbc on demands don’t work without it

then all the other bits, istr doing local java installs for cubemx etc.

thanks, multiarch is already installed, i’ll peruse that link as well
then it’ll be a couple of times through the loop with more of the forgotten ones.

i’ve noticed that the ‘database’ eg synaptic are a whole lot quicker and that my Kindle slows quite dramatically when it approaches full. many seconds to switch screens when doing things with collections.

oh arduino gave a no ~/ard165/java/bin/java message, eventually twigged and pulled the 64bit arduino package.
no one mentioned that.
i really do have some cracking ‘duh’ moments

stephen

zmemw16 wrote:of course, one thing i forgot – flash! itv and bbc on demands don’t work without it

i use flashplugin-nonfree as i normally use iceweasel.
searching freshplayerplugin or fresh not found in the standard repositories.
pepperflashplugin-nonfree being added as i type, although i usually use chromium for translating far eastern characters.

now installing chromium
… … …

stephen

zmemw16 wrote:now installing chromium

i’m sure i’ll be installing the odd packages for a while as i discover they’re missing … …

stephen