AMD64 and 32-bit apps
Recently I've begun considering migrating over to the amd64 platform (my motherboard just died on my athlon xp system, much to my chagrin) and figure this is a good place to ask for users experiences. I'm not worried about my video card drivers, since NVIDIA has great amd64 support, at least, so I'm told. My main concern is that I need to install some 32-bit emulation libraries and kernel modules, so I've read, to compile 32-bit apps, and that some compiled 32-bit apps will only work under a 32-bit environment, requiring me to setup a seperate environment to chroot into. I'm running gentoo and I'm up to the task, just wondering if anyone has any experience in this specifically and anything I should be concerned about or not to worry too much about. Thanks. -- Carlton C. Stedman II, sageman@wpi.edu "To iterate is human, to recurse, divine." -- L. Peter Deutch
On Tuesday 03 May 2005 01:12 pm, Carlton C. Stedman II wrote:
I'm not worried about my video card drivers, since NVIDIA has great amd64 support, at least, so I'm told.
ive always used `emerge nvidia-kernel nvidia-glx` to take care of my nvidia card on my x86 and amd64 machines ... then just put 'nvidia' into /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6
My main concern is that I need to install some 32-bit emulation libraries and kernel modules, so I've read, to compile 32-bit apps, and that some compiled 32-bit apps will only work under a 32-bit environment, requiring me to setup a seperate environment to chroot into. I'm running gentoo
i'm not really up-to-speed with how fedora/redhat/suse/debian/etc... are handling the multilib issue, but i can speak for Gentoo ... since it sounds like you're doing a new install, grab a 2005.0 amd64 install and the rest should be pretty seamless ... with the 2005.0 release, amd64 supports multilib by default (you can turn it off if you wish to have a pure 64bit env) the default glibc/gcc will install 32bit and 64bit compilers / libraries ... just make sure you turn on 32bit emulation support in your kernel, and then when you go to run a 32bit app, most will 'just work' ... of course it depends on *what* you're trying to do as to how easy it'll be if you wish to compile your own 32bit code, just add '-m32' to the build process: gcc -m32 -c test.c -o test32bit -mike
I'm currently running Gentoo for AMD64 on a dual Opteron system. Everything works fine, and I'm really happy with it. I have been able to run binaries compiled on 32-bit x86 systems without any problems so far. It sounds like you need to do some cross-compiling for 32-bit x86. I've never done that, so I can't say how well that would work, but if you have the "cross" and "multilib" USE flags, you should have all of the components you need to do that. I have also run 32-bit Slackware on the Opteron box, and that worked fine. So if you don't want to deal with the AMD64 and cross-compiling issues, you could just install a 32-bit Linux distro on it with no performance hit. Keep in mind that there aren't anywhere near as many Gentoo packages in Portage that are marked stable for AMD64 as there are for x86, so that may be a problem for you if you can't live without some specific package. There are other possible issues if you intend to use your AMD64 box as a desktop system. For example, Flash doesn't seem to work on AMD64 yet, and I don't think you can play WMV files, even with the 32-bit libraries. If you want to know more about my specific experiences with AMD64 on Linux, feel free to contact me or drop by the Sin Lab. -James
Recently I've begun considering migrating over to the amd64 platform (my motherboard just died on my athlon xp system, much to my chagrin) and figure this is a good place to ask for users experiences. I'm not worried about my video card drivers, since NVIDIA has great amd64 support, at least, so I'm told. My main concern is that I need to install some 32-bit emulation libraries and kernel modules, so I've read, to compile 32-bit apps, and that some compiled 32-bit apps will only work under a 32-bit environment, requiring me to setup a seperate environment to chroot into. I'm running gentoo and I'm up to the task, just wondering if anyone has any experience in this specifically and anything I should be concerned about or not to worry too much about. Thanks.
-- Carlton C. Stedman II, sageman@wpi.edu "To iterate is human, to recurse, divine." -- L. Peter Deutch _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
On Tuesday 03 May 2005 03:02 pm, James Baldassari wrote:
I'm currently running Gentoo for AMD64 on a dual Opteron system. Everything works fine, and I'm really happy with it. I have been able to run binaries compiled on 32-bit x86 systems without any problems so far. It sounds like you need to do some cross-compiling for 32-bit x86. I've never done that, so I can't say how well that would work, but if you have the "cross" and "multilib" USE flags, you should have all of the components you need to do that.
there is no 'cross' USE flag, that's not how Gentoo does cross-compiling ... cross-compiling is done simply by manipulating CHOST (and assuming you installed a cross-compiler ... use the 'crossdev' frontend i made to make your life easier) ... ymmv depending on your target of course :)
For example, Flash doesn't seem to work on AMD64 yet, and I don't think you can play WMV files, even with the 32-bit libraries.
sure it does, install the 32bit firefox-bin and the 32bit netscape-flash and run that version to use flash ... i create two mozilla profiles, one for my normal usage and one for when i want to launch a 32bit browser to view a flash page $ firefox # 64bit native version $ firefox-bin -P 32bit-profile # a 32bit profile i made -mike
On Tuesday 03 May 2005 04:30 pm, Mike Frysinger wrote:
On Tuesday 03 May 2005 03:02 pm, James Baldassari wrote:
For example, Flash doesn't seem to work on AMD64 yet, and I don't think you can play WMV files, even with the 32-bit libraries.
sure it does, install the ...
err i misread you ... yeah, xine & mplayer seem to be a bit flaky in amd64 atm compared to x86 in terms of supporting a wide variety of formats on x86, i rarely found a media file that neither xine or mplayer would play properly, but on amd64 it's harder to get those random formats to play nicely (or at all) :( -mike
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Mike Frysinger wrote:
On Tuesday 03 May 2005 04:30 pm, Mike Frysinger wrote:
On Tuesday 03 May 2005 03:02 pm, James Baldassari wrote:
For example, Flash doesn't seem to work on AMD64 yet, and I don't think you can play WMV files, even with the 32-bit libraries. sure it does, install the ...
err i misread you ...
yeah, xine & mplayer seem to be a bit flaky in amd64 atm compared to x86 in terms of supporting a wide variety of formats
on x86, i rarely found a media file that neither xine or mplayer would play properly, but on amd64 it's harder to get those random formats to play nicely (or at all) :( -mike
I'm running SuSE 9.2 on my dual Opteron and haven't had too many sw problems. I would encourage anybody doing this to run a 32-bit version of their browser so that the 32-bit plugins will work (there are few 64-bit plugins available). I'm running xine and it plays files fine. Is there a particular format that works in 32-bit mode but not 64-bit mode? Suse separates libraries into /lib, /lib64, /usr/lib, /usr/lib64. Very few if any (in my experience - ymmv) source tarballs understand /usr/local/lib{64}. Later, Andy - -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA, USA http://www.wlug.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFCd/k3Hl0iXDssISsRApcoAJ4+YxvlGnNTvOgskVXps48GZkElxQCfaDqF V/N+UusSVBcoGpd/S0tNYYA= =AH49 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Tuesday 03 May 2005 06:20 pm, Andy Stewart wrote:
I'm running SuSE 9.2 on my dual Opteron and haven't had too many sw problems. I would encourage anybody doing this to run a 32-bit version of their browser so that the 32-bit plugins will work (there are few 64-bit plugins available).
yeah, flash works great in the 32bit browsers using macromedia plugin
I'm running xine and it plays files fine. Is there a particular format that works in 32-bit mode but not 64-bit mode?
quicktime format comes to mind ... but ive never tried running a 32bit mplayer/xine, just native versions ...
Suse separates libraries into /lib, /lib64, /usr/lib, /usr/lib64. Very few if any (in my experience - ymmv) source tarballs understand /usr/local/lib{64}.
Gentoo has /lib<ABI> while /lib is the 'native' path ... so on a multilib amd64 setup, /lib and /lib64 are the same dir while /lib32 is a different one -mike
Dear Friends, Can you all please suggest me kind of VPN application based on Linux (especially RedHat 7.3 compatibility) ? Thanks, Aramico
Hello Aramico, Are you trying to connect to a VPN server or are you trying to provide VPN services to others? -Adam On Jun 15, 2005, at 8:07 AM, Aramico wrote:
Dear Friends,
Can you all please suggest me kind of VPN application based on Linux (especially RedHat 7.3 compatibility) ?
Thanks,
Aramico _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
How about FreeSwan? -----Original Message----- From: wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org [mailto:wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org] On Behalf Of Aramico Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 8:07 AM To: sageman@WPI.EDU; Worcester Linux Users Group Subject: [Wlug] VPN Dear Friends, Can you all please suggest me kind of VPN application based on Linux (especially RedHat 7.3 compatibility) ? Thanks, Aramico _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
participants (7)
-
Adam Keck -
Andy Stewart -
Aramico -
Carlton C. Stedman II -
James Baldassari -
Mike Frysinger -
Skip Gaede