Compiling and running 32-bit Python on 64-bit server?

[Mikko Ohtamaa]

Hi,

Some server-side Python applications are limited by memory usage
(hint: Zope), because Python effective uses processes and not threads
for multiprocessing. This is especially true for 64-bit platforms,
since Python programs are all about references and objects and 64-bit
effectively doubles reference size.

Some benchmarks 32-bit vs. 64-bit were discussed here:

http://jstahl.org/archives/2010/01/2...ks-python-2-6/

How one could create 32-bit Python run-time enviroment, preferable
virtualenv, on 64-bit Linux (VPS), reducing memory usage? This
environment could actually beat 64-bit in performance, due to better
memory cache use.

I assume this involves having lib32 libs and compiling Python with
some magical switches.

Cheers,
Mikko