Re: amd64 questions

[Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de>]

Bryan Koschmann - GKT <gktnews@gktech.net> writes:

> I've spent the past week trying to find a full answer on amd64 support.
> Maybe I'm just not understanding it, but all I can find are debian howtos.

Debian seems to have some unique problems in the way they handle AMD64
compared to other distributions. I would not trust what you read
there, they make it much more complicated than it really is. The right
forum would have been discuss@x86-64.org

> I'm running 2.4.25 on slack 9.1. I was assuming I could simply recompile
> the kernel for the amd64, and then whatever other bits of software I
> wanted specifically to run at 64bit, but it's not seeming that way.

It's that way. You just need a 64bit capable cross compiler to compile
the kernel, which is not that difficult to build from sources. You can also
find binaries for that at 
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/x86_64/supplementary/CrossTools/8.1-i386/
(usable with rpm2cpio on non RPM distributions). Then you can
cross compile the kernel in the normal way with 
make ARCH=x86_64 CROSS_COMPILE=x86_64-linux-

A few programs (namely iptables and ipsec tools) need to be used
as 64bit programs because the 32bit emulation doesn't work for them.
ipchains works though.

> Should 2.4.25 be able to run 64bit, or are is it more of an all or nothing
> type thing?

2.4.25 supports 64bit just fine.

-Andi