Hi all

I am new to server management. Recently, I have been asked to manage a server. This server has got 2 Intel 5405 Xeon Quad Core Processors and it has been loaded with CentOS 5.0 x86_64.

I was installing some of the applications like MySQL etc. Then I got some what confused about which flavor of these software should I install i.e. x86 or x86_64? This is because the xeon 5405 processors' architecture is x86 while OS loaded on this box is x86_64.

Is two processors the reason for installing x64 CentOS on this machine? And if yes, then should I install all the binaries of x64 flavor henceforth?

Rgds
n

Hi and welcome to CentOS forums

Intel Xeon 5405 is full 64 bit processors ,
please review the processor
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=33079

the software you install is probably be installed based on the applications you are going to run
note that most 32 bit applications will run on a 64 bit architecture system .

Quote:
You can just use "yum install ..." and the architecture should be handled automatically as long as the standard repository definitions are used - $basearch in the /etc/yum.repos.d/*.repo will take care of it. Please do the Required reading, including Installing Software.

If the server is actually still 5.0 it is seriously out of date on security and bug-fix patches - the current release is 5.4. See the CentOS 5.4 Release Notes to see the procedure to update.