[CentOS] Yum installed perl on CentOS 5.11 64 bit

Mon Nov 24 12:35:57 UTC 2014
Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org>

On 11/23/2014 10:23 AM, Niamh Holding wrote:
> 
> Hello Centos,
> 
> Is 4:perl-5.8.8-43.el5_11.x86_64 really dependent on the 32 bit  perl.i386
> 4:5.8.8-43.el5_11 as yum is suggesting, or has something got mixed up on
> the system?
> 
> yum install perl
> Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
> Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
>  * base: repo.bigstepcloud.com
>  * epel: mirror.bytemark.co.uk
>  * extras: mirrors.vooservers.com
>  * rpmforge: mirror.vit.com.tr
>  * updates: anorien.csc.warwick.ac.uk
> Setting up Install Process
> Package 4:perl-5.8.8-43.el5_11.x86_64 already installed and latest version
> Resolving Dependencies
> --> Running transaction check
> ---> Package perl.i386 4:5.8.8-43.el5_11 set to be updated
> --> Finished Dependency Resolution

CentOS-5 has a default value for the yum setting "multilib_policy" of
"all", where on CentOS-6 or later, the default value of
"multilib_policy" is "best".  See this link for details:

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/15/html/Deployment_Guide/sec-Configuring_Yum_and_Yum_Repositories.html

http://serverfault.com/questions/77122/rhel5-forbid-installation-of-i386-packages-on-64-bit-systems

Because of this Anaconda (the OS installer) installs i386 and x86_64
packages on CentOS-5 from the beginning and unless you take steps to
remove them, you will get both architectures for all packages.

This behavior mimics the upstream behavior in RHEL.

What you need to do after install if you want x86_64 only is this:

1.  Modify .rpmmacros for root user and any user you want to see the
arch of packages with this value (in a .rpmmacros in the user's home
directory):

%_query_all_fmt %%{name}-%%{version}-%%{release}.%%{arch}

2.  Do this query (after you adjust .rpmmacros per step one) to see any
32 bit packages installed:

rpm -qa | grep i[3,6]86 | sort

3.  If you are sure you want to remove all the 32 packages, you would do:

yum remove $(rpm -qa | grep i[3,6]86)

4. Then edit /etc/yum.conf and add this line to set "multilib_policy" to
"best":

multilib_policy=best

Thanks,
Johnny Hughes

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