amd64 kernel + 32-bit userland: compiling a new amd64 kernel

[Dieter Rohlfing <dr-erc@gmx.net>]

Hello everybody,

when I got my new Dell Latitude D830 (1 GB RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo T7250) a few
months ago, I installed the 32-bit version of Debian-Lenny (kernel and userland
i386-architecture).

A few weeks ago I upgraded the laptop with 3 GB RAM, so now it has a total of 4
GB RAM. Under the i386 kernel the command free shows about 3.5 GB available
memory, so I lost about 0.5 GB RAM due to the i386 architecture.

Therefore I installed the amd64 kernel, which is part of the i386 distribution.
Now free shows 4048 MB available memory. So, now I have a completely i386
userland and an amd64 kernel.

In order to build a customized new amd64 kernel I guess, I'll need some 64-bit
libraries for the building process, because as I said: my system is (with the
exception of the kernel) completey i386, that is it has only 32-bit libraries.
Now my questions:

Is it possible, to build an amd64 kernel inside an i386 system (with 32-bit
libraries)? If yes, what additional packages do I have to install? Are they
available inside the i386 distribution or do I have to download those from the
amd64 distribution?

I appreciate all hints and replies.

Dieter


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