Method to switching armv7 to aarch64

[Elrondo46]

Migration 100% complete with your method. Armv7l docker containers are compatible with aarch64

[skunark]

Glad it worked! I’ve been running for a good week now and no issues yet across several RPIs

This wasn’t really my method just a simplified version of what’s on arch wiki

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Migrat ... ing_system

Once you back up the required files there’s nothing to lose other than time to see if it works.

[graysky]

I don't think the pactree bit is needed. As a proof of concept, I stripped arm7vh down to just base and a few critical packages, then did the following which did work. From there I went through and reinstalled other packages. Why? My concern was forcing all packages to be explicitly installed which would jack up packages as dependency.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
< for entire process, do not invoke sudo at all, become root using su - >

< remove everything but essential packages >
pacman -D --asdeps $(pacman -Qqe)

< make the following explicitly installed >
pacman -D --asexplicit base base-devel linux-rpi linux-firmware raspberrypi-bootloader raspberrypi-bootloader-x firmware-raspberrypi raspberrypi-firmware openssh sudo haveged

< reboot and verify ssh works/interactive login, etc >
< change armv7h to aarch64 in /etc/pacman.conf >

pacman -Scc
pacman -Syy
pacman -Qqn | pacman -S -

< /usr/bin/sync will be broken so wait a few minutes longer than you think is needed in order to be sure everything is written
to media >
< reboot will not work so pull the plug to reboot >
< inspect .pacnew files to correct invalid entries such as /etc/makepkg.conf >
')

[skunark]

I questioned pactree as well, but i believe the gist is to just install the dependencies needed by pacman before the full upgrade where things start to break. There's also an error with pactree, so i'm not even sure all the dependencies needed by pacman actually get installed. I took the pactree step more of a safety net vs a requirement to do this process as there might be a scenario that this step is actually required.

Just for pure runtime, I think it is best to prune the large packages, but i don't think you need to go that far and prune it down to base. Definitely remove any custom packages or have the aarch64 flavor built and added to a custom repo so those too can be installed at the same time. Also stop all unnecessary services like databases, memcached, apache, etc that eat up memory since they are not needed during this process.