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Old 14th November 2008
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phoenix phoenix is offline
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Join Date: May 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nfries88 View Post
I know 32-bit systems cannot run 64-bit binaries.
All AMD64 processors can run in 32-bit mode? Is that a BIOS option?
Also, 64-bit processors can run 32-bit binaries? I thought that was only a Windows feature.
It's an OS feature. Pretty much all Linux distros support running 32-bit programs on 64-bit OS installs. FreeBSD supports this as well. Don't know about the other BSDs.

There are two different methods for doing this:
- the chroot method, where you install a complete 32-bit userland in a directory on the system, where it all runs on top of the 64-bit kernel, and you just "chroot" into it before running 32-bit apps
- the "32-bit compat" method, where you install all the 32-bit libs and apps right into the OS, into directories like /usr/lib32. Then, when you execute a 32-bit app, it looks in the /usr/*32/ directories for its libraries, and runs just like any other app.

FreeBSD supports both of the above. The compat method is what you use when you install 32-bit apps via the ports tree.
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