[CentOS] Migration from 32 to 64 bits

Tue Feb 25 23:07:05 UTC 2014
Lists <lists at benjamindsmith.com>

On 02/25/2014 10:32 AM, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 12:28 PM, Steve Clark <sclark at netwolves.com> wrote:
>> On 02/25/2014 01:17 PM, Fabrizio Di Carlo wrote:
>>> Hello to all,
>>>
>>> currently I have CentOS 6.4 32 bit, very simple setup on my notebook,
>>> I want to migrate it from 32 to 64 bits cause I want to play with some
>>> VMs etc etc.
>>>
>>> Do you have some suggestions on how to do backup of folders (mainly I
>>> have 1 user) or just copy the user folder and stop?
>>>
>>> Fabrizio
>>>
>> Hmmm... we have 32bit CentOS 6.3 running both 32bit and 64bit VirtualBox VMs just fine.
> Yes, if you want to use KVM you'd need a 64-bit install, but for
> VirtualBox or VMware Player it should only depend on the CPU
> capability, not the host OS.

While technically true, I can't imagine wanting to do much with VMs 
without the extra RAM space afforded by 64 bit O/S. Really, 2 (ok, 3) GB 
of RAM is *not enough* to do serious work. I'd strongly suggest starting 
with at least 8 GB of RAM. You can do it with the 2 or so that you have, 
but I wanted to scream with 2 GB using VirtualBox for Windows 
compatibility testing.

8 GB lets me run a host OS (Fedora) and 2 VMs without too much trouble. 
3 VMs starts to slow down noticeably, no matter how I tweak the memory 
split.

-Ben