Re: i386 debian to 64bit intel

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> I am new to linux and made the mistake of loading the i386 Debian
> release 10 onto my 64bit intel system. I now want to put the 64bit
> version for intel on the system. 
> Do I have to backup the data I have in my $HOME directory to load after
> loading the 64bit version or can I in someway just load the the OS over
> the i386 OS and retain the $HOME contents?????

FWIW, I recently needed to run a amd64 binary on my i386 system.
Rather than make a full install I just added the few needed amd64 packages.

I.e. something like

    dpkg --add-architecture amd64
    apt update
    apt install linux-image-amd64 libc6:amd64

You do need to run an amd64 kernel if you want to run amd64 binaries (so
you'll need to reboot after installing the amd64 kernel) but that kernel
will happily run the i386 binaries as well, so you can simply replace
your 686 kernels with the amd64 kernel and keep using your existing
system (and I'd strongly recommend to use an amd64 kernel in any case if
you have more than 4GB of RAM).


        Stefan