Dell 2850 & amd64?

[David O'Brien]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2004 at 02:32:57PM +0100, Palle Girgensohn wrote:
> Before I build all ports needed, is there anything I need to set to make 
> the ports build 64 bit? All I've done now is to get the kernel built in 
> 64-bit mode. Is that enough to make all ports built in 64 bit? Shall I set 
> CPUTYPE to something? The CPUs are two Xeon, is that p4?

Do not set CPUTYPE or set it to "nocona".  "p4" will be interrupted as a
32-bit machine.
 
> Is it even wise to use amd64? Is it stable enough? Docs say so, but 
> browsning this list gives me second thoughts?

Quite stable.  I think it is wise. :-)  You will though have access to
about 3000 less ports (IIRC) because some are i386-only or simply just
don't compile, or run and segfault.

> The machine shall be a general utility system, running email (cyrus) and 
> web (apache), postgresql and php, some simple java (tomcat).

Java might be the deal breaker for you... Sun didn't port the JDK to
64-bit AMD64 until version 1.5.  You'll have to investigate more how this
will affect you.

-- 
-- David  (obrien at FreeBSD.org)