Ubuntu

What's the best way to upgrade an installation from i386 to amd64?

Asked by Olek Wojnar

I have a server running Ubuntu-server 6.10. It currently has a 32-bit processor but I'm about to upgrade it to a 64-bit processor. I was wondering what would be the best/easiest/safest way to also upgrade my Ubuntu from the i386 version to the amd64 version. Is there a way to just switch versions during an upgrade to feisty since all package versions will most likely be incremented and will therefore be replaced?

Any help or advice on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

-Olek

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Ralph Janke (txwikinger) said : 		#1

The safest way is to do a total new installation for amd64, and then transfer (or backup and restore) the home folder and maybe some of the /usr/share folders and /etc/ configuration folders.

I would never try to run even temporarily mixed mode. You would have too many libraries partly dependent on each other, which will likely not work if part ist 64-bit and part is 32-bit. The number of latent problems you might introduce cost you at the end probably far more time, then the manual work to think abiout which folders you want to transfer and to do it.

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Best Olek Wojnar (olekw) said : 		#2

Ok, thanks for the answer! In that case I think I'll wait until after 7.04 is released and do a new install of amd64 using a post-upgrade backup of the i386 setup.