besides holding keys down, I assume there's a more permanent way to make it always boot 64? (pmset something?)

> [...] I assume there's a more permanent way to make it always boot 64? [....]

VersionTracker has several listed apps that do just that. (I won't link to any of them, because none have been thoroughly reviewed yet.)

If there's a Terminal command I haven't run across it yet.

From 64-Bit Transition Guide: Kernel Extensions and Drivers:


You can also set the machine to boot into 32- or 64-bit mode on the next boot with

systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture i386 or systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture x86_64

as noted in man systemsetup.

looks like a good thing to set as say, a noon root cronjob. or how do you make a shutdown item?

Or... is that a setting ONLY for next boot, or is it persistent?

Since neither Mac in my household is 10.6-bootable, I'll let you do that research.

It appears to be a persistent setting, but that set flag is not in the help/man pages and it has no complementary "get" variation to check/confirm.

Mac OS X Manual Page for systemsetup(8)

The "get" variation, oddly, employs slightly different phrasing:

-getkernelbootarchitecturesetting as opposed to
-setkernelbootarchitecture

You can do it automatically by using this program.