Running i386 scripts in 5.3

[Tim Traver]

Hi all,

ok, I have read a bunch of the posts on the subject, and it seems like a 
fairly complicated subject.

I have recently purchased a Tyan Dual Opteron machine that I am pretty 
happy with so far. I have FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE for amd64 installed, and 
it is running good.

However, I didn't realize that there are several binaries that I need to 
run that are i386 binaries, and there is no way for me to re-compile them.

I've tried the /usr/src/tools/lib32/build32.sh script, and although it 
appeared to work, there were many wanrings. When trying to run my 
binaries, it get core dumps.

Is there a better way to do this ? or should I just recompile the kernel 
using i386 to be sure ?

If I go the route of making the operating system i386, what am I really 
losing in the way of performance ?

And is there a roadmap to get a nice clean method for running i386 
binaries ? what about i386 binaries from 4.x ?

I just wanted to post this question before I went ahead and basically 
rebult the system, just in case there was an easy way of doing this. I 
hate to get a cutting edge 64 bit system and have to run it in full 32 
bit mode...

Thanks,

Tim.