Re: installing 32b debian on unused partition
Ric Otte wrote:
$ mkdir /mnt/debinst
$ mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/debinst
I recommend making a directory /chroots in both installations. Each
contains one softlink and one directory. The former points up two
directories to the root, and the latter is a mountpoint for the root
filesystem of the other installation and is listed in /etc/fstab.
I use the names /chroots/32arch and /chroots/64arch on my machines.
With that approach, you would
# mkdir /chroots
# mkdir /chroots/32arch
# ln -s ../.. chroots/64arch
# mount /dev/sda3 /chroots/32arch
The manual then says to
$ mkswap /dev/hda5
$ sync; sync; sync
$ swapon /dev/hda5
You already have swap running for your 64bit install ... don't do that.
However, you do need to remember to list the existing swap partition,
just like the home and the tmp partitions, when you build the new fstab.
I was wondering if I could avoid doing something similar (with sda5 replacing
hda5) because I already have swap mounted at /dev/sda5.
Exactly.
I would then continue with:
$ /usr/sbin/debootstrap --arch i386 woody \
/mnt/debinst http://http.us.debian.org/debian
I haven't tried it, but it should be fine if your kernel has biarch
support enabled (so you can run 32 bit code inside the installer).
I am here trying to use the same swap, tmp, and home partition. If there is
any problem with that, please let me know.
Nope. I find it useful to have /home bind mounted onto the chroot.
That lets me use both environments, transparently, at the same time.
Bear in mind that any binary programs you have in home directories don't
work when booted the other way from the way they were compiled.
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....
In grub you refer to a file, within a filesystem, of a partition.
Simply use the same filename but be sure to specify the partition
correctly. It's in the docs for grub.
Does this look like it will work? Any suggestions or warnings that will save
me from disaster are appreciated.
I did something similar on one machine; I booted using the 64 bit DFS,
used debootstrap to put pure64 onto the hard drive, got everything
working, realized I occasionally needed to run some binary only 32bit
kernel modules, and added pure32 as a chroot. In that case, however,
the machine was inheriting the functionality of an existing machine (as
an upgrade) so I didn't install because I already had the drive image.
Hope that helps.
Reply to: