MapServer & friends on 64-bit system?

[Brent Wood]

> >>Would it be safer to get a 32bit system, since we don't anticipate
> >>actually using 64-bit applications?  Or does it really not matter one
> >>way or the other?  The client is leaning towards the 64-bit system so
> >>as to have the capability of running 64-bit applications in the
> >>future, if and when the need arises.
> >>
> >>I'd appreciate hearing any insights or stories of peoples'
> >>experiences.

My experience:

I built an AMD64 box as a GIS workstation, mostly running PostGIS/GEOS/GDAL/
QGIS/GMT. Shuttle system with socket 939 3500+CPU, 1Gb memory & 2x 80GB SATA
drives with software RAID. (I needed something luggable to take to sea
regularly)

My major problem was hardware support, with Mandrake, SuSE & Fedora all having
problems with SATA controller/drives. Ubuntu installed & ran faultlessly,
however, and the QGIS development team have some Ubuntu fans who have put
together some instructions for Ubuntu QGIS users, which includes GDAL.

Also, Lingis (which includes GDAL) is currently being updated, & will be
released for AMD64 (& SuSE 9.1/9.2/9.3) in a month or two.

I decided to install from tarballs & compile from scratch to avoid dependency
issues, and have no problems so far with Postgres/PostGIS/GDAL/GEOS/shapelib/
QGIS/GMT/ImageMagick all compiled from source on a 64bit system.

About 4 weeks of perfectly stable running so far

Prior to running Ubuntu I had good success with SuSE 9.1/9.2 and Lingis, all 32
bit. Totally stable & (IMHO as a GIS technophile :-) very fast.

All the major distros (& even M$) are improving AMD64 versions, packages are
becoming readily available and the platform is very fast.

Strongly recommended, even if used as just 32bit.


Brent Wood