

On 64-bit hosts (which typically come with hardware virtualization support), 64-bit guest operating systems are always supported regardless of settings, so you can simply install a 64-bit operating system in the guest.
#VIRTUALBOX 64 BIT LINUX GUEST 64 BITS#
Since supporting 64 bits on 32-bit hosts incurs additional overhead, VirtualBox only enables this support upon explicit request. If you want to use 64-bit guest support on a 32-bit host operating system, you must also select a 64-bit operating system for the particular VM. You must enable hardware virtualization for the particular VM for which you want 64-bit support software virtualization is not supported for 64-bit VMs. You need a 64-bit processor with hardware virtualization support (see the section called “Hardware vs. VirtualBox supports 64-bit guest operating systems, even on 32-bit host operating systems, provided that the following conditions are met: VirtualBox's documentation provides the following advice regarding running 64-bit operating systems: VirtualBox is available in the Ubuntu repositories in the virtualbox-ose package.

Gilles points out that I was mistaken about VirtualBox and VMware supporting 64-bit guests on 32-bit hosts.

In the 64-bit system, mount the existing partitions, then set up a 32-bit schroot (see this guide)) to run 32-bit programs. Install it on a separate partition, keeping your existing 32-bit installation as well. So the easiest route to running 64-bit applications would be make a parallel installation of an amd64 Ubuntu. You can grab the kernel from the amd64 distribution, and applications should just run, but under natty the package isn't easily installable. Ubuntu doesn't provide a 64-bit kernel in its i386 distribution (Debian does). amd64) kernel, in fact you can run a wholly 32-bit Linux userland on an amd64 Linux kernel. You can run 32-bit applications on an x86-64 (a.k.a. My recommendation is to just get a 64-bit host or at least a 64-bit kernel. But it's not a good idea if you don't need it: it's slow, memory-hungry, and awkward. For VirtualBox, your processor must have hardware virtualization support (either AMD-V or VT-x, shown as svm and vmx in the flags: line of /proc/cpuinfo under Linux) most x86-64 processors except for the earlier ones, and in particular I think all core i5 models, have this support.įailing that, you can use a virtual machine technology that emulates an x86-64 processor in software, such as Qemu. Both VMware and VirtualBox can run a 64-bit virtual machine on a 32-bit host system, if you have a 64-bit processor.
