32 or 64

32 or 64

[Ray Andrews]

Gentlemen:


Now that I have both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of various binaries, 
whereas I used to just store them in a /Bin directory which is on my 
path, now, if I'm jumping back and forth between 32 bit Debian and 64 
bit Debian, whereas previously different installs could share the same 
/Bin directory (all being 32 bit previously) now I hafta be able to 
distinguish 32 from 64, so I'm thinking to symlink /Bin to either /Bin32 
or /Bin64 and I'm wondering if there might be a simple way for zsh to 
make that link for me based on knowing if either itself, or the kernel 
is 32 or 64 bit.  I could test the output of 'uname -r' of course, but 
I'd not be surprised if zsh can do it more elegantly and robustly than 
checking for substrings in the kernel name.

Re: 32 or 64

[Daniel Shahaf]

Ray Andrews wrote on Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 11:15:20 -0800:
> Now that I have both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of various binaries, whereas
> I used to just store them in a /Bin directory which is on my path, now, if
> I'm jumping back and forth between 32 bit Debian and 64 bit Debian, whereas
> previously different installs could share the same /Bin directory (all being
> 32 bit previously)

Don't share the /bin directory between OS installs.  Doing so is liable
to leave one of the two OSes unbootable at some point.

That's assuming /bin is on the / partition.  if /bin is a symlink to
/usr/bin [as seems to be fashionable nowadays] and /usr is its own
partition, then sharing that partition can be made to work, with some
care.  But I don't think that's what you have.

> now I hafta be able to distinguish 32 from 64, so I'm
> thinking to symlink /Bin to either /Bin32 or /Bin64 and I'm wondering if
> there might be a simple way for zsh to make that link for me based on
> knowing if either itself, or the kernel is 32 or 64 bit.  I could test the
> output of 'uname -r' of course, but I'd not be surprised if zsh can do it
> more elegantly and robustly than checking for substrings in the kernel name.

For future reference, there's `uname -m`.

But again: I would recommend just giving each OS its own partition.
That's a lot less likely to break.

Cheers,

Daniel

Re: 32 or 64

[Ray Andrews]

On 21/12/16 11:33 AM, Daniel Shahaf wrote:
> Ray Andrews wrote on Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 11:15:20 -0800:
>
> Don't share the /bin directory between OS installs.  Doing so is liable
> to leave one of the two OSes unbootable at some point.

That's just for my personal binaries, not the system /bins.  I suppose 
the expected thing would be to have that stuff in /usr/local/bin but I 
like to keep all my personally made stuff in one partition separate from 
stuff made by the OS or by installing things officially, that way I just 
mount my partition on to the FS of any OS and I've got all my stuff 
exactly perfect right away and I basically never touch  anything else 
except sometimes you hafta tinker with a few files in /etc. The only 
hitch has ever been the jump to 64 bit, which gives me a different set 
of my binaries and a different zsh.  Maybe I haven't figured out the 
best protocol for that.
>
> For future reference, there's `uname -m`.

That's best, because it won't change with any 64 bit kernel, I think.
>
> But again: I would recommend just giving each OS its own partition.
> That's a lot less likely to break.

Yup, I'm quite a partitioner, there's just the shared stuff to to with 
zsh and my few personal binaries.  Nice to unpack everything from one 
suitcase and be right at home.