At Tue, 5 Jan 2010 11:26:32 -0800 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote: > > On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 11:24 AM, MHR <mhullrich at gmail.com> wrote: > > On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 7:46 AM, Oliver Schulze L. <oliver at samera.com.py> wrote: > >> Hi, > >> It is posible to do a simple procedure to upgrade a Centos 5.4 32bits > >> (i686) to > >> a Centos 5.4 64bits(x32_64)? > >> > >> I was thinking about an upgrade or install without formating. > >> > >> I will have a current backup before doing it. > >> > >> Any advice/tips is welcome. > >> > > > > I *strongly* doubt it. When you go from 32 to 64 bit systems, you are > > essentially replacing the kernel and (at least) about 90% of the > > standard libraries. I am willing to bet that this mandates an > > installation. > > > > For the record, I've never tried it. When I put CentOS on my machine, > > I already had a 64-bit CPU and I never seriously considered NOT using > > the 64-bit install. > > > > HTH. > > > > mhr > > > > Sorry - PS: IIRC, you don't _have_ to format your disks to install > over what's on them - check the installation options when you get that > far and read through them carefully. You should be able to re-use > existing partitions, but I can't remember whether that *requires* > reformatting them - I've just always done that (reformat them). You really should/ought to reformat /, /usr, and /var. /boot and /home don't need to be reformated (leaving /boot alone allows for multi-OS version booting, eg CentOS 4 and CentOS 5 or Ubuntu and CentOS or CentOS and Fedora, etc.). The installer will be unhappy about NOT reformatting /, /usr, or /var. It will warn about not reformatting /boot -- this is generally OK though. It will NOT complain about not reformatting /home or any other random non-system file system you might have (I do things like have a dedicated /mp3s file system on my laptop for example). Unlike the *default* file system setup, which only creates /boot and / file systems, it is *strongly* recomended to instead create separate /boot, /, and /home file systems (at least these three -- separating out /usr and/or /var might make sense under some situations, esp. servers) -- this allows updates, multi-OS, and recovery without having to make an explicit backup (although, having backups is still recomended!). > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > > -- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows heller at deepsoft.com -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/