Running a 64bit and 32bit fedora at the same time

[Harald Grossauer]

I have an Athlon64 system with FC4-x86_64 running. For several reasons I
also would like to have a FC3_i386 system running at the same time. How
can I do that?

I tried to use Xen (the 3.0-unstable-x86_64) but it did not work (could
not find my root partition after the xen kernel was loaded, probably due
to missing SATA support in the kernel). Neither could I compile Xen-2.7
myself (gcc4 complained about a struct with unkown length, gcc32 issued
a warning which is treated as an error in by the xen Makefiles).

So I created an ext3 filesystem in an ordinary file and mounted it. Then
I thought I could install FC3_i386 into that file so that I later can
chroot into it. But since the installer (autorun) of FC3_i386 needs to
be root I am afraid that it messes up my currently runnning system.

Do you have some links, help or additional information for me?

[Sundarapandian A]

I hope the following may help you

On your running x86_64 linux take a backup of /etc/fstab. Edit your
/etc/fstab and replace the label references to appropriate node
references. (Use /etc/mtab to find the nodes) Example

The original file is
-------------------------
LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/usr            /usr                      ext3   defaults         0 0
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
LABEL=/opt              /opt                    ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/sda2               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              udf,iso9660
noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0

Modified file will be
---------------------------
/dev/hda1                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
/dev/hda2              /usr                      ext3   defaults         0 0
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
/dev/hda5              /opt                    ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/sda2               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              udf,iso9660
noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0

Reboot the machine and boot it with FC3_i386 CD

during installation create a new partitions for (/ and /usr)

(You can still use the same swap, home [if a seperate partition] and
opt partitions if you don't have to use any binary from them)

select the partitions to be formatted using disk druid very carefully.
Don't format what is not created newly.

Proceed with the installation.

To fix the boot (If you face some problem)!! Boot the machine with the
last installed linux (FC3_i386) and edit the /boot/grub/grub.conf file
appropriately.

Please be careful when making new partitions and naming them. There is
a high risk of loosing data if something is done accidentally!!

Regards,
Sundar.

On 12/1/05, Harald Grossauer <harald.grossauer(a)uibk.ac.at&gt; wrote:
>  I have an Athlon64 system with FC4-x86_64 running. For several
> reasons I
>  also would like to have a FC3_i386 system running at the same time. How
>  can I do that?
>
>  I tried to use Xen (the 3.0-unstable-x86_64) but it did not work (could
>  not find my root partition after the xen kernel was loaded, probably due
>  to missing SATA support in the kernel). Neither could I compile Xen-2.7
>  myself (gcc4 complained about a struct with unkown length, gcc32 issued
>  a warning which is treated as an error in by the xen Makefiles).
>
>  So I created an ext3 filesystem in an ordinary file and mounted it. Then
>  I thought I could install FC3_i386 into that file so that I later can
>  chroot into it. But since the installer (autorun) of FC3_i386 needs to
>  be root I am afraid that it messes up my currently runnning system.
>
>  Do you have some links, help or additional information for me?
>
>  --
>  fedora-list mailing list
>  fedora-list(a)redhat.com
>  To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
>  

--
Trinity: Maybe we did something wrong.
Neo: Or didn't do something.
Morpheus: No, what happened happened and couldn't have happened any other way.
Neo: How do you know?
Morpheus: We are still alive.

[Gilboa Davara]

On Thu, 2005-12-01 at 09:14 +0100, Harald Grossauer wrote:
>  I have an Athlon64 system with FC4-x86_64 running. For several
> reasons I
>  also would like to have a FC3_i386 system running at the same time. How
>  can I do that?
>  
>  I tried to use Xen (the 3.0-unstable-x86_64) but it did not work (could
>  not find my root partition after the xen kernel was loaded, probably due
>  to missing SATA support in the kernel). Neither could I compile Xen-2.7
>  myself (gcc4 complained about a struct with unkown length, gcc32 issued
>  a warning which is treated as an error in by the xen Makefiles).
>  
>  So I created an ext3 filesystem in an ordinary file and mounted it. Then
>  I thought I could install FC3_i386 into that file so that I later can
>  chroot into it. But since the installer (autorun) of FC3_i386 needs to
>  be root I am afraid that it messes up my currently runnning system.
>  
>  Do you have some links, help or additional information for me?
>   
OT question:
> From where did you find Xen 3.0 x86-64 tools (and kernel) for FC4?
AFAIK Xen is only supported (both host and guest) under i386.

Gilboa

[Bill Rugolsky Jr.]

On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 09:14:23AM +0100, Harald Grossauer wrote:
>  I have an Athlon64 system with FC4-x86_64 running. For several
> reasons I
>  also would like to have a FC3_i386 system running at the same time. How
>  can I do that? 
 
I created an LVM2 logical-volume per distro release, e.g., fc3-i386,
and then used QEMU to install from the DVD images.  I was surprised that
it worked so well.  After the installation, I manually fixed up the
environment (/etc/modprobe.conf, etc.) to also run with User-Mode Linux.
Xen will of course provide better performance.

Regards,

	Bill Rugolsky