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

Sun Jan 21 02:52:27 UTC 2007
Devraj Mukherjee <devraj at gmail.com>

Thanks Johnny.

On 1/20/07, Johnny Hughes <mailing-lists at hughesjr.com> wrote:
> 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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>


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