Re: perspectives on 32 bit vs 64 bit
On Mon, Oct 03, 2005 at 02:04:43AM -0400, Faheem Mitha wrote:
> I don't understand why so much of the memory is taken by the kernel. If
> each application is 4GB, then why is the kernel taking as much as 2GB?
> Does that mean that the application only gets 1/2 the memory that the
> operating system has allocated to it? What is the other half being used
> for?
The kernel is taking 2Gb of address space, not memory. You can have
multiple applications using 2Gb each. An application can only have 2Gb
allocated to it. The kernel uses its space for PCI devices etc.
> One option is to run a 64 system with a 32 bit chroot. I think there
> should be no problem with this. However, I was wondering if people has any
> idea whether it was possible to use the regular /home from inside the
> chroot. Also, is it possible to have X forwarding working from inside the
> chroot (assuming one is logging into the regular system)?
Yes and yes. You can use a bind mount to make /home available in the
chroot. X works if you keep $DISPLAY and have access to
$HOME/.Xauthority. If you use dchroot, then the "-d" switch keeps the
environment and X just works.
> One more question is whether there is any problem sharing a home directory
> between a 32 and 64 bit Debian system on an amd64 (assuming one is
> dual-booting)? I'm just talking about ascii here, I know that binaries
> would need to be recompiled.
No, that is fine.
Hamish
--
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish@debian.org> <hamish@cloud.net.au>
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