PCLOS 64 & Home Partition...i have a question

[patomas]

When pclos 64 is available....we will have to format our home partition or the home partition that we have for PCLOS 32 will be useful for the new PCLOS 64?

[pupthai]

I think if you switch to 64bit you need to re install because the programs are all ported to 64 bit - it even has its own repo for 64 bit OS       x86_64

[Xenaflux]

You can backup your present /home, and later import some files with settings
..............>>>>>   I guess

[kjpetrie]

Assuming your /home partition only contains data and configuration information, the architecture of the system reading it is irrelevant. In theory it should make no difference. That said, I would certainly backup when the time comes, because you never know what the installation process might do to existing data, and depending whether the 64-bit is a direct equivalent of the 32-bit or not, there might be a recommendation to start with a clean /home.

We will have to wait and see.

[patomas]

Ok, thanks everybody....we will wait and see.

[rubentje1991]

Personally, I'd start "clean" (and adding only the things (data) back I need) - but I love configuring it completely again sometimes.....

[Refugee]

Right....
I am novice to intermediate and have just got a new motherboard that arrived yesterday.
It is an Ausus M5A78L-M L X V2 with 8 gig of 1333Mhz of DDR3 RAM and an AMD Bulldozer FX Hexa 3.3Ghz processor assembled and bench tested by the supplier. It is going to be fitted as soon as i have shut down and opened and cleaned the 500 w power supply and case fans.
QUESTION When is the 64 bit release going to be here? I ask as the manual says you need 64 bit to see all the RAM.
I will do the backup with half the memory idle as the hardware faults with the old motherboard are that bad The hard drive is not even seen after a power cut plus loads of other errors!

[AS]

Right....
I am novice to intermediate and have just got a new motherboard that arrived yesterday.
It is an Ausus M5A78L-M L X V2 with 8 gig of 1333Mhz of DDR3 RAM and an AMD Bulldozer FX Hexa 3.3Ghz processor assembled and bench tested by the supplier. It is going to be fitted as soon as i have shut down and opened and cleaned the 500 w power supply and case fans.
QUESTION When is the 64 bit release going to be here? I ask as the manual says you need 64 bit to see all the RAM.
I will do the backup with half the memory idle as the hardware faults with the old motherboard are that bad The hard drive is not even seen after a power cut plus loads of other errors!

It will be released when it is ready.  In the meantime you can enjoy all your RAM by installing a .pae or .pae.bfs kernel on the 32bit version. 

You could still dual boot, and test one of the available 64bit test ISOs, which are fairly stable but "unsupported".

AS

[Neal ManBear]

When the 64bit is released, you should start fresh. You can test adding your 32bit config files to it by adding them one at a time from your back up, if you want, but you should start clean.     

[Archie]

Backup is always an important gameplan. As kjpetrie stated, in theory it shouldn't make any difference because your /home on a separate partition usually just store settings and system files are mostly on / unless of course you have some strange things going on your /home.

I'd start clean as well because there are just too many stuff accumulated - install/reinstall/uninstall of apps, /var/log files, /tmp, etc.

[Refugee]

Well the 32 bit is very fast and i have made a note of the pae kernel and now need to know to add it using a spare hard drive for test. The IDE one i was going to use for back up is out as i have had to use my IDE dongle  in order to get the CD drive working as i was court on the hop by the fact that it is a sata only MB! Another job before the covers go back on again. When all that is done i can put it on the big drive i want it on and all should be well. I may even be tempted to stay with the kernel and be done with it.

[Neal ManBear]

Refugee,     
You can add a new kernel without removing the old. Just install it and reboot. On first boot, give it extra time to build and install the modules and drivers - it may take a while.     
The old kernel will remain on your boot menu as an option, if you should ever need it.     

[Thomas C]

I recently installed PCLOS 64 over my 32 bit PCLOS install without formatting my home partition.  I did not have any difficulty at all.  I can access everything in my home partition without difficulty.

[Refugee]

Well i am doing it in safe mode with the big drive unplugged on the drive that in the end will contain the backup when i do my final clean install.
I will be putting my test hd back on later today. It looks like the closest kernel is AMD64/Opteron (K8) optimised linux kernel for x86 arH however the processor i have is a 6 core AMD as shown in my post above so there is going to be some careful testing to do before i go for my final install.
Q It looks like there are two identical kernels in Synaptic if anyone can tell me if there is a difference between them.
I am aware that i may have to wait a while for a kernel to be released that fully supports my processor. With AMD being popular with Linux it should not be too long.

So far even in 32 bit mode i have been unable to get it to do anything that is demanding enough to make the processor fan throttle above 200rpm idle or get rid of the cold breeze from the power supply!
It in an efficient motherboard no matter what!

Note:- If you buy a motherboard like this one in an ideal world you would be advised to also buy a SATA DVD drive as well. I had to work around this by robbing my IDE to USB converter without issue. There are 6 SATA ports on it and no space for IDE. It just has none.