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phatal · 2014-10-05, 14:10

Hi folks,
Hopefully this isn't a question that has been asked a thousand times already but I haven't been able to find the answer....

Basically I have little experience with Linux but after a lot of searching and struggling along I have managed to setup a pretty nice HTPC. I have used a HP N54L Microserver with a HDMI video card etc to run xbmcbuntu and I have managed to configure automatic couch potato, sick beard, sabnzbd, emulators, PS3 Bluetooth controller etc etc. I first began this when xbmcbuntu was at version 12.0 so this was only 32 bit. I have upgraded along the way so that it is currently running 13.0 however this is still 32 bit. I have 16 gig of RAM installed which the BIOS sees on boot and I would like to see if I can make that useable by upgrading to the 64 bit version of xbmcbuntu.

The problem I have is that I am scared that all my hard work will come undone by attempting this. The "if it ain't broke don't fix it" saying comes to mind...

So questions - firstly if I upgrade to 64 bit xbmcbuntu will I lose everything and have to start from scratch again? Secondly if the settings and other programs aren't erased how do I go about doing this? Lastly thoughts on whether or not I will actually see any performance benefit by doing this? If not then there is probably not much point risking it.

Another thing..... Some of my media is on the OS drive so I have the added complication of needing to relocate that first - assuming that the drive would need to be formatted to change to 64 bit.

Thanks guys.

un1versal · (This post was last modified: 2014-10-05, 15:18 by un1versal.)

Welcome to forums

IIRC you cannot update 32 bit install to 64 bit. So a new install of xbmcbuntu v13 (its only 64bit anyway) and those others apps and whatever remote re-installation reconfiguration is the only recourse for you if you want 64bit

You can of course backup your xbmc libaries etc and restore them see Backup (wiki)

On a sidenote 4GB is already excessive for a HTPC and no matter what you add on to install 16GB will never be used, and is some overkill.

However -- you can install some 32 Bit PAE kernel which support more than 4GB ram but no idea how that will affect your current config if any. Anyway that goes beyond these forums and you should consult more specialised Ubuntu / Linux documentation and community Forums..

phatal · 2014-10-05, 15:18

Thanks for that. Pretty much what I expected. So knowing that is there any real performance gains in doing the upgrade? XBMC isn't going to make any use of it I am guessing but potentially a good thing for the background OS and apps?

un1versal · (This post was last modified: 2014-10-05, 15:37 by un1versal.)

Its hard to say.

On one side If you haven't needed 16 GB till now you wont likely notice any difference
On the other side you can use a PAE kernel and see if that changes.
On the other other side you could argue that 64bit is better than 32bit and as such things will perform better.

Performance wise, if 100 people reply here as to their opinion you will see there's an argument for and against and you will get muddled into the pointless discussion. If those things perform better because you have more ram or not is subjective to the number of apps you have running and what services and what amount of ram they all need.

The OS part wont need much ram itself, Linux the OS itself is not a resource hog. You can happily imo have 4GB on a HTPC + Linux OS and a few apps/services running happily.

**wsnipex** · 2014-10-05, 16:10

Note that you can use your 16 GB Ram on 32bit linux as well, as the kernel uses PAE by default.

phatal · (This post was last modified: 2014-10-06, 01:16 by phatal.)

(2014-10-05, 16:10)wsnipex Wrote: Note that you can use your 16 GB Ram on 32bit linux as well, as the kernel uses PAE by default.

OK that is interesting. How do I make that happen? As I mentioned above the BIOS reads the full 16GB however within XBMC system settings it only shows as 4GB. In saying that though memory used is rarely more than 1 GB from memory so there probably won't be any performance gain. I just figured that if I can access all of the RAM I might as well have it. It may help on larger emulators potentially or other background apps?

nickr · 2014-10-06, 05:47

What is the output of the free command? And uname -a

phatal · 2014-10-06, 05:56

Hopefully this works....

Quote:xbmc@xbmc:~$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 16593836 13153848 3439988 0 315692 12061896
-/+ buffers/cache: 776260 15817576
Swap: 16776188 0 16776188

Quote:xbmc@xbmc:~$ uname -a
Linux xbmc 3.5.0-47-generic #71-Ubuntu SMP Tue Feb 18 23:59:30 UTC 2014 i686 athlon i686 GNU/Linux
xbmc@xbmc:~$

So I am guessing that this is showing that it sees the 16GB and that it is using 13GB! Surely that isn't right....

**wsnipex** · (This post was last modified: 2014-10-06, 06:22 by wsnipex.)

thats exactly what it means. Its using the full 16GB, 12 of which are used as filesystem cache.

oh btw, you are likely still running quantal(12.10), which has been deprecated for months now. You must upgrade to 14.04 if you want any software upgrades, including for xbmc/kodi.

phatal · 2014-10-06, 06:26

I feel like such a NOOB with this... Apologies for sounding dumb here but..

So does this mean that the underlying OS actually does use the full 16 GB so doing an update etc will not change anything anyway?

How come when in XBMC it only shows total memory of 4GB?

**fritsch** · (This post was last modified: 2014-10-06, 07:43 by fritsch.)

Let's say it that way: If your xbmc would need* more than 4gb - something is unbelievably wrong :-)

4 gb RAM is of far less concern than running a 2 year old outdated distribution - make a clean install of xbmcbuntu13 and everything will be fine, automatically.

*need as in eat.

phatal · 2014-10-06, 07:54

Yeah good point. So you think just bite the bullet and do the update. So just move any media off of the OS drive and do a clean install? Then I will have to start from scratch with the other apps (sickbeard etc etc). OR by "everything will be fine, automatically" are you saying that all the settings and apps etc will remain? I would have thought that an update would format the drive and bring it back to initial setup.

**wsnipex** · 2014-10-06, 07:55

xbmc only sees 4GB because thats the max addressable ram for 32bit programs. So in short: the OS can use more then 4GB, but any given process can only use 4GB. Makes sense?

**fritsch** · 2014-10-06, 07:55

We don't support piracy tools in here.

I did not say _anything_ at all about your settings, apps and so on. A clean installation will of course whipe the whole drive. You should never have any media stored on your OS drive.

phatal · 2014-10-06, 07:59

No probs. Thanks for your help folks. Sounds like a new install might be on the cards along with adding a new drive in simply for OS. Cheers.