installing 32b debian on unused partition

[Ric Otte <ric@otte.ucsc.edu>]

Hi,

When I installed debian on my amd64 I didn't expect things to work very well,
and so I made an extra 10g partition in which I could install a 32 bit kernel
to use while I got pure64 working.  Surprisingly, the pure64 install went
very easily and everything works (more things work than did on a previous
i386 install).  But now I still have this unused extra 10g partition, and I
figure I might as well install debian on it; that way I can compare the 32bit
vs the 64bit performance.

My current partition scheme (from /etc/fstab) is:
    /dev/sda1       /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
    /dev/sda4       /home           ext3    defaults        0       2
    /dev/sda6       /opt            ext3    defaults        0       2
    /dev/sda10      /tmp            ext3    defaults        0       2
    /dev/sda9       /usr            ext3    defaults        0       2
    /dev/sda8       /usr/local      ext3    defaults        0       2
    /dev/sda7       /var            ext3    defaults        0       2
    /dev/sda5       none            swap    sw              0       0
Since /dev/sda3 is the unused partition (formatted ext3), I would like to
install debian on it.  I was hoping to use the same swap, tmp, and home
partition.

I was about to try to use the debian installer, when I came across
3.7 Installing Debian GNU/Linux from a Unix/Linux System at
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch-preparing.en.html .
If I understand that document correctly, I can avoid the install cd and
simply do the following:
      $ mkdir /mnt/debinst
      $ mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/debinst
The manual then says to 
          $ mkswap /dev/hda5
          $ sync; sync; sync
          $ swapon /dev/hda5
I was wondering if I could avoid doing something similar (with sda5 replacing
hda5) because I already have swap mounted at /dev/sda5.  
I would then continue with:
      $ /usr/sbin/debootstrap --arch i386 woody \
          /mnt/debinst http://http.us.debian.org/debian
      $ chroot /mnt/debinst /bin/bash
      # vi /etc/fstab
       # file system    mount point   type    options                  dump pass
       proc            /proc           proc    defaults                 0    0
       /dev/sda3         /             ext3    defaults                 0    0
       /dev/sda5         none          swap    sw                       0    0
       /dev/cdrom       /cdrom         iso9660 noauto,ro,user,exec      0    0
       /dev/sda10         /tmp         ext3    rw,nosuid,nodev          0    2
       /dev/sda4         /home         ext3    rw,nosuid,nodev          0    2
I am here trying to use the same swap, tmp, and home partition.  If there is
any problem with that, please let me know.
      $ mount -a
      # dpkg-reconfigure console-data
      # editor /etc/network/interfaces
      # editor /etc/resolv.conf
      # echo DebianHostName > /etc/hostname
      # /usr/sbin/base-config
      # apt-get install locales
      # dpkg-reconfigure locales
      # apt-get install kernel-image-2.X.X-arch-etc

Then I would need to setup grub to give me the option to boot into it at boot time.  I have
no idea how to do this, since all the entries in my /boot/grub/menxxxx refer
to /boot/vmlinuz....

Does this look like it will work?  Any suggestions or warnings that will save
me from disaster are appreciated.

Ric