Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:33:04 +0100 From: Roland Smith <rsmith@xs4all.nl> To: Gary Kline <kline@thought.org> Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org, freebsd-stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: 8.0-RELEASE completed... Message-ID: <20091127083304.GA8618@slackbox.xs4all.nl> In-Reply-To: <20091127055757.GA75657@thought.org> References: <1259283983.92302.23.camel@neo.cse.buffalo.edu> <20091127030601.CAB2C1CC0E@ptavv.es.net> <20091127055757.GA75657@thought.org>
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--6c2NcOVqGQ03X4Wi Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 09:57:58PM -0800, Gary Kline wrote: >=20 > Altho I am still some time from having my migration from the > 1998 Kayak -> 2009 Dell done and working, will it be possible > to upgrade my 32bit 7.2-R, p4 to a 64bit 8.0?=20 It is possible, but not easy. Upgrading from 7.x to 8.0 on the same architecture is not that hard IMHO. Upgrading from i386 to amd64 on the same release is doable but tricky; you need a spare root partition to install the amd64 binaries. Combining these two sounds like a big can of worms to me. My advice would be _not_ to do it. It would be far easier to just install 8.0 on the new machine and migrate y= our data and configuration files. You are going to have to build your ports from scratch anyway, because you're switching to another architecture and another major release. As far as I know, the on-disk filesystem format hasn't changed. (unless your old machine is still running UFS1. The default now is UFS2) There are a couple of differences between 7.x and 8.0; * The USB stack has been rewritten. I've had to change the following in /etc/devfs.rules: replace "add path 'usb*' mode 0660 group usb" with "add path 'usb/*' mode 0660 group usb"=20 * The name of the tty devices has changed in /etc/ttys; ttydN -> ttyuN (impacts /etc/ttys) * There have been a lot of changes in the kernel configuration. If you want= a custom kernel, start anew from the 8.0 GENERIC kernel so you don't miss anything.=20 * A lot of changes as well in /etc/src.conf (the file that defines which pa= rts of the system are built from source) * Network cards show up in dmesg and ifconfig, but not as devices in /dev (= but that could be a configuration error on my part.) All my configuration files are kept in a directory that is under revision control by git(1), so I could show you exactly what changes I've made. > would get that clear as a first step. My Intell duo-core is > very fast; would moving to the 64-bit system be a net gain or > loss [in performance]. =20 There is no clear gain or loss answer to that one. It depends on the worklo= ad you are running. On the plus size, amd64 has a lot more general registers available in the CPU than i386. On the other hand, the binaries are bigger.=20 Since you're switching to another CPU, things like cache size will have a major inpact. WRT single versus multi cores, my impression has been that the individual cores in a multi-core intel CPU are somewhat slower that the core of a similarly clocked single-core CPU. (based on some informal testing I've done with povray). If your workloads are capable of running on multiple cor= es (e.g. make jobs, different programs running concurrently) there will be a significant speed increase. You only _need_ amd64 if you are running out of address space on the i386 architecture. Having said that, I've been running amd64 on my desktop since 5.3-RELEASE more or less because I can, and it has worked fine ever since. = Be aware though that there are a few (most binary) ports that do not work on amd64. You can see that in the port Makefiles by looking for things like NOT_FOR_ARCHS and ONLY_FOR_ARCHS. HTH, Roland --=20 R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/ [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated] pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725) --6c2NcOVqGQ03X4Wi Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.13 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAksPjsAACgkQEnfvsMMhpyU9FgCffxYTR3f1N8BJ1gMQd/7e9A3F BEQAniXU53GOIKUMLlX75yOh+kJs9Qq4 =wOcc -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --6c2NcOVqGQ03X4Wi--
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