On 2020-03-02, Justin Muir <justinkm...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello all, > > Running GENERIC i386 kernel on on a 64-bit amd machine. Just wondering > whether an upgrade amd64 is warranted. Any opinions?
Generally yes, unless you are low on memory. > If so, just upgrade system? Re-compile kernel? Other options? Do NOT try to do this by just updating the kernel, it will not work. OpenBSD does not do "mixed 32/64 bit" like some OS. An OpenBSD/amd64 kernel cannot run 32-bit binaries. The official advice: you should reinstall from scratch. There may be other advantages to doing that too in particular if some of your filesystems are too tight for space you will need to rearrange them to fit the larger amd64 binaries. However unofficially - essentially this is like a "flag day" upgrade of the same architecture (like was done in 5.5 for the time_t changes). I won't give more advice on how to do that here because if you need more advice than the clues in the previous sentence this is not the route for you! But if you are willing to deal with fallout yourself if it breaks it could be a good learning experience. If you go for that route: Be prepared to reinstall the whole system in case of problems. Do have usable backups of anything you care about first.
