Hi,
do you know a painless method to "convert" one of my linode running a 64bit os to a 32 bit one?

I just converted a 64 bit image to 32. I don't believe there is a painless way but it went pretty smooth.

Just rsync or tar off any setups you want to preserve. ieL
cd /
tar cvf /etc.tar /etc
gzip the tar archive and sftp it to your local box.

do rpm -qa > packages

sftp packages to your local box.

Make sure you have everything you want to archive using this procedure.

Then reinstall your linode as 32 bit.

Once you log in, upload the archive tar.gz files and the packages file.
do not untar /etc on top of the etc directory. Untar it somewhere else so you can copy setup files as needed.

The do: yum install `cat packages` to reinstall your original setup.

Yum update and then complete your setup using the old etc.tar.gz for original setups.

Hope this helps.

Fred-

thanks for your reply fred,
do you mean that a simple copy of the /etc directory will do the tricks? many configuration files are different froma 32bit to 64bit, so I don't think that it will work also for a simple VPS running a web server and a mail server...

On the contrary. Binaries are different; configuration files are the same.

I will not say this so hard.
dovecot.conf is only an example of different configuration file required for 32 and 64bit.

And yet no where in their wiki is ANY mention of those hypothetical differences.

http://wiki.dovecot.org/BasicConfiguration

In fact, searching on "64bit" or "64 bit" on their wiki comes up with ZERO results.

Best post an example of 32 bit dovecot.conf and 64 bit dovecot.conf to clarify.

I went here to get assistance and I need to give assitance to people who don't trust me
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/postfix

The setup files are the same the binaries are different. You need a tar or rsync copy of /etc or any other directories you want to that may have .conf files. If your running mysql..and you want to preserve the database you will have to backup and restore the database also.

32 and 64 bit .conf files are the same.

There may be some sub-directories you want a copy of. That's why I suggested tar or rsync.

Fred-

You need to be careful with /etc, however. Not only does it contain config files but it also contains processed data (eg db/dbm/hash files) which may not necessarily be bit-size independent. Many of these can be regenerated from the config file, but you need to know about them.

Further some config files may refer to directories such as /application/lib64/mylib.so (eg when referring to plugins) which won't exist in the 32bit version. One such location could be a customised PAM setup.

I'd be very very cautious about overwriting /etc when converting from 64bit to 32bit as a result.

If I was going to do this then I'd consider getting a _second_ linode for a month, building it from scratch and verifying it works as required, then switch DNS to the new linode and cancel the first. Basically a "swing server" and a fresh build.

_________________
Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)