Safest way to go from x86 to x86_64

[Philip Prindeville]

On 12/14/10 6:46 AM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 02:35:24PM +0000, Paul Johnson wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 14 December 2010 14:27, Richard W.M. Jones<rjones at redhat.com>  wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 02:07:37PM +0000, Paul Johnson wrote:
>>>
>>>> Is there a safe way to install the x86_64 system over the 32 bit version
>>> and
>>>> then clean off the 32 bit stuff that is no longer needed? If I was using
>>>> f14, I'd just trash the drive and then install, but I've got things how I
>>>> want them under rawhide.
>>> Not really.  I would definitely suggest that you reinstall.
>>>
>>> I thought that would be the case - just wanted to check to ensure it's not
>> something I can do another way.
>>
>> Okay, let's try another. Is there a way to grab a list of the packages
>> installed and use a network installer to do the job based on the list?
> I guess you can do:
>
> rpm -qa --qf '%{name}\n'>  kickstart
>
> and try to construct a kickstart file out of that ...
>
> Rich.
>

Also, use "rpm -Va" to get a list of config files that have been modified.

Unfortunately, there's no way to detect additional files (in /etc, etc) that aren't owned by a package but represent additional configuration state you might want to bring over.

I usually make a copy of config files (cp -p $file $file.orig) before I edit them the first time... then just do "locate .orig" to find them all.

-Philip