running 64-bit binaries on 32-bit Linux?

cyberfishee · 01-24-2008, 08:39 PM

Hi,
Is it possible to run 64-bit binaries under 32-bit Linux without emulating a whole system? My hardware is 64-bit compatible (Intel Core 2 Duo). I thought I have found what I was looking for in qemu's usermode. Apparently it allows binaries from different architectures to be run like a native binary provided all the required libraries are installed (much like wine, except it supports many architectures). However, apparently the Ubuntu package of qemu does not contain the qemu-x86_64 binary/script. (while providing a qemu-system-x86_64 one that emulates a whole system)

Code:

$ qemu
qemu                   qemu-make-debian-root  qemu-system-mips
qemu-arm               qemu-mips              qemu-system-mipsel
qemu-armeb             qemu-mipsel            qemu-system-ppc
qemu-i386              qemu-ppc               qemu-system-sparc
qemu-img               qemu-sparc             qemu-system-x86_64
qemu-m68k              qemu-system-arm

AFAIK the qemu-arch binaries are used to execute a binary of that particular architecture (like wine), while qemu-system-arch is used to emulate a whole system in that arch (like vmware).

Does anyone have experience with this?

Thank you

lazlow · 01-24-2008, 08:45 PM

NO.

You can run 32-bit if you are running 64-bit.

cyberfishee · 01-24-2008, 09:07 PM

thanks for your reply. Yes, I know I can run 32-bit if I am on 64-bit. However, I only wish to run one application in 64-bit mode (a chess engine I wrote that benefits greatly from 64-bit as the internal data structures I use are 64-bit), and so I am reluctant to install a 64-bit OS and to have to deal with all the 64-bit annoyances. If there is no way to do something like this (which would be kind of weird, since even PPC and Sparc binaries can be run) I will resort to using VMware (yes, it is possible to run 64-bit guest inside 32-bit host, though I couldn't believe it at first either). Thanks again.

lazlow · 01-24-2008, 11:46 PM

There are almost no annoyances on the current 64bit distros.

cyberfishee · 01-25-2008, 01:20 AM

I see, thank you for your replies.

jlinkels · 01-25-2008, 05:12 AM

Especially not with Debian Lenny like you are running there hardly are problem. There are some recent threads in this forum about that, you might want to check those.

jlinkels