On 3 Mar 2010, at 15:29, Stroller wrote:
...
I have started following the Gentoo Linux AMD64 Handbook, because
the Quick Install Guide is described as "x86". Having untarred the
stage I am surprised to find a lib32 directory. I thought
compatibility with 32-bit binaries was optional. Or am I
misunderstanding? This is going to be a headless server & I can't
think that it'll need any binary packages - possibly the management
utility for the RAID controller will be distributed as a binary, I'm
not sure yet (the hardware RAID key was missing when I got this
machine ☹)
Further to Alan's reply, I've proceeded a little further.
I'm onto section 2.3: Changing profiles, where it says:
"If you want to have a pure 64-bit environment, with no 32-bit
applications or libraries, you should use a non-multilib profile."
See my comments in the quoted above. It shouldn't be too expensive to
enable the RAID in this machine (which is on the mainboard, but
requires a little hardware PCB "key" to be fitted). That's a Dell
PERC4, which AFAICT is a rebadged LSI megaraid.
This post [1] http://tinyurl.com/3dzcl9 referrs to the management
utility thus: "MegaCLI comes as a RPM containing only a single
statically linked 32-bit Linux binary", however `eix mega` suggests
there may be alternatives, such as `megactl` [2]
My immediate thought when reading the handbook was that it's "best"
and "cleanest" and "more right" to only have 64-bit libraries on a 64-
bit system, but this need for the RAID management utility is making me
wonder if that would be cutting off my nose to spite my face.
Thoughts?
Stroller.
[1]
http://www.kaltenbrunner.cc/blog/index.php?/archives/4-LSIlogic-MegaRAID-SAS-and-the-self-explaining-CLI.html
[2] http://sourceforge.net/projects/megactl/
