# To Boot or to Chroot?

Powerpc64 is slightly different from some of the other architectures, because a 64-bit kernel running 32-bit userspace can successfully chroot and execute 64-bit programs. However, if the kernel personality has been set to 32-bit by a utility such as linux32, it will eventually fail when glibc thinks it is building on a 32-bit system and tries to include incompatible assembler code in the 64-bit glibc.

To see if you can successfully chroot to build the final powerpc64 system, enter the following command which tests if you are running a 64-bit Linux 2.6 kernel (with a 64-bit personality):

    uname -a | grep '^Linux.*2\.6\..*ppc64' && \
        echo "ok to chroot" || echo "you must boot"