[CentOS] centos 5.5 x86_64 mixing with i386 rpms

Sat Dec 18 06:31:14 UTC 2010
Johan Scheepers <johansche at telkomsa.net>

Robert Heller wrote:
> At Fri, 17 Dec 2010 20:23:36 +0200 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:
> 
>> Good day,
>>
>> What will happen if on x86_64 some i386 rpms get installed, please.
> 
> Depends.  It is in fact *normal* for i[3456]86 *libraries* to be
> installed on a CentOS/RHEL x86_64 system (many are installed by
> default).  It is possible to also install i[3456]86 *programs* as well,
> and this works just fine, since A) the x86_64 kernel/program loader is
> just as happy to run 32-bit programs as to run 64-bit programs and B)
> the various i[3456]86 *libraries* are also generally (or can be)
> installed.  Installing a i686 *kernel* or *kernel module* is pretty
> much useless, unless you reboot with the 32-bit kernel.  At which point
> your *64-bit* programs won't work :-(.  You don't want to do that.  For
> some programs/packages, installing the 32-bit version might be ill
> advised, but I don't think things will necessarily break.
> 
> What you should *not* do is try to upgrade a 32-bit OS to 64-bit: you
> should *always* do a 'fresh install' if/when you do that.  Make a backup of
> your /etc and /home and maybe things like /var/www and /var/ftp, dump
> your MySQL/Progress/OpenLDAP databases, etc., unless that stuff is on a
> separate file system.
> 
>> Thanks
>> Johan
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>>
>>                                                                                   
> 
Thanks for your time to explain.

This happened while I was installing multimedia plugins.

I keep to the official repos for usual updates.

Regards
Johan