Re: clean upgrade 32 -> 64?

[Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu>]

Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk> writes:

> On Mon, Mar 03, 2014 at 05:08:37PM -0700, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
>> I'm about to replace one of my old 32-bit x86 Debian boxes with a
>> 64-bit; I'll actually just be moving the disk drives out of the old box
>> into the new one and doing any minor configuration changes that'll be
>> neede (which will be very minor).  So, while I'm at it, I'm curious --
>> is there any clean way to do an update that will simply replace all the
>> 32 bit packages with 64 (and do all the other necessary multiarch
>> stuff)?
>
> It depends.
>
> Arguably the cleanest solution is to re-install using a 64-bit
> installer. However, this will blow away your configuration, choice of
> packages and so on.
>
> If you want to cross-grade, the accepted procedure is detailed here:
> https://wiki.debian.org/CrossGrading

Thanks!  Finally got the new machine set up to try the crossgrading, and
everything worked just fine.  There's just one issue remaining:  a huge
number of i386 packages on the machine show dependencies on either apt
or dpkg, so any attempt to upgrade reinstalls the i386 apt and dpkg.  Is
there an easy way around this, or do I need to plan on replacing all of
these packages specifying amd64?

Here's an example from the end of the list of conflicts I got:

 texlive-pictures : Depends: dpkg (>= 1.14.18) but it is not going to be installed.
 module-init-tools : PreDepends: dpkg (>= 1.15.7.2) but it is not going to be installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

     Install the following packages:     
1)     apt [0.9.16.1 (testing, unstable)]
2)     dpkg [1.17.6 (testing, unstable)] 



Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] q
Abandoning all efforts to resolve these dependencies.
Abort.
babs:46$ dpkg -l dpkg
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                     Version           Architecture      Description
+++-========================-=================-=================-=====================================================
ii  dpkg                     1.17.6            amd64             Debian package management system