[CentOS] Risks of installing i386 rpms on a x86_64 CentOS 4.4 installation

[Johnny Hughes]

On Sat, 2007-01-20 at 17:59 +1100, Devraj Mukherjee wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> Are there any risks in installing i386 binaries (via rpm) on a x86_64
> installation of CentOS 4.4?
> 

I don't know if risk is the right word .. and if you stay with the i386
RPMS that are in the x86_64 repo you will have minimum headaches.

The problem comes in if you want to have BOTH the i386 and x86_64
version of a package installed.  In that case, there are sometimes
shared files to both packges (ie, files in /etc/, /usr/share/, etc.)

If those "Support Files" are not EXACTLY the same, there is an error
installing or updating them.

We try very hard to make sure the i386 files in x86_64 tree work as
planned.  If you install the i386 RPMS from outside that tree, you will
have to make them work yourself.

Personally, I would only install the x86_64 distro if I was reasonably
sure that I would not require i386 RPMS (or minimal i386 RPMS).

I just use i386 on all workstations and I use x86_64 on servers ... and
even on servers, only ones that will really be under heavy load or will
definitely not need i386 packages.

Some tricks to make i386 packages install ... use:

rpm -Uvh --nodocs rpmname1 rpmname2

(rpmname1 and 2 are the names of the rpms you want to install)

This prevents the install of docs for the i386 packages .. which cuts
out the usual source of the Duplicate file error.  
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