How to change a 32 bit driver into a 64

[tomeriker]

Can someone tell me if it is possible to take a 32 bit driver and change it to a 64 bit driver, or would you have to write the driver in 64?

I am hoping there is a program that can do it for me.

Thanks for any help

Tom

[techieMoe]

I've never written a device driver before, but I have written other software, and generally speaking you can't just wave a magic wand or run a program through a converter to make it 64-bit; the source code must be compiled using a 64-bit compiler.

[tomeriker]

Thanks for the info. There is a gentleman with an alienware M17 with ubuntu 8.04 64 bit. His wireless is rtl8187se and After e-mailing realtek about needing a linux driver for it, they sent me a 32 bit linux driver and said they had no plans for a 32 bit version. I told him he could reload the 32 bit ubuntu but he said he had tried it and had issues.

Thanks for the help, I will relay the info to him. He will just have to buy a USB wireless adapter.

[i92guboj]

If what they sent you is a binary driver, then you are out of luck and can skip the rest of my post.

If they sent the source code (probably in C) then it might be possible to compile it for a 64 bit machine. However, how difficult that is will entirely depend on how well written the driver is.

If the programmers were smart enough to produce clean code the process should be quite straightforward. But if the code quality is not too good you might need to rewrite big portions of the code.

[techieMoe]

I told him he could reload the 32 bit ubuntu but he said he had tried it and had issues.

Can you elaborate on "issues"? Rather than having him buy another device perhaps we could work out what went wrong on his 32-bit install?

[techieMoe]

Was the original poster talking about Solaris or Linux?

[i92guboj]

Was the original poster talking about Solaris or Linux?

Unless Ubuntu has a secret Solaris release, it's linux. It's on the 3rd post.

The procedure to modify the grub config file is not too different though. But the original problem is not whether to boot a 32 or 64 bits kernel, but the fact that there's no driver available for one of the two architectures.

[techieMoe]

Unless Ubuntu has a secret Solaris release, it's linux. It's on the 3rd post.

The procedure to modify the grub config file is not too different though. But the original problem is not whether to boot a 32 or 64 bits kernel, but the fact that there's no driver available for one of the two architectures.

That's what I thought. I guess we're still waiting on word from the original poster then. If this thread stays dead for much longer I might have to close it.