On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 11:26 AM, Yasha Karant <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On 01/24/2013 04:27 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 12:46 AM, Bluejay Adametz <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>   How does one activate both to appear so that the library packages for
>>>> both
>>>> will be put into the system via the GUI?
>>>
>>>
>>> You should be able to explicitly install 32-bit versions of libraries
>>> with something like
>>>        yum install libblah.i686
>>
>>
>> "yum" used to automatically install both, if available, by default.
>> This went away a major release or two ago, for lots of good reasons.
>> Now you have to ask specifically for the non-default-architecture
>> package, or install a package that has it as a dependency.
>>
>> This is heavily dependent on the packages not overlapping, and on
>> being built by our favorite upstream vendor and propagaed to
>> Scientific Linux. Not all software can be gracefully installed this
>> way. glibc, for example, has "glibc.x86_64" and "glibc.i686" in the
>> x86_64 repository for just such  compatibility. "httpd", however, only
>> has a 64-bit version.
>>
>> You can also do "yum list | sort" to get a list of packages available
>> in multiple architectures,
>>
>>> I'm not sure if there's a way to install both bits with one installation.
>>>
>>>                   - Bluejay Adametz, CFII, A&P, AA-5B N45210
>>>
>>> We are all stalks sprung from what we bury in ourselves. - A.J.Axline
>>
>>
>> If you have software that requires both, you can write an RPM that
>> lists both dependencies. Some software does just that, especially for
>> cross-platform compilation toolkits.
>>
>
> I shall restate the question.  How do I specify to the GUI Add/Remove
> Software utility so that on a specific platform (architecture), e.g.,
> X86-64, the other platform will be listed and can be installed using the GUI
> that lists all of the packages and allows one to select, via a "check mark",
> all selected packages for a single or few pass installation?
>
> Specifically,
>
> (1) how to enable that the packages for both X86-64 and IA-32 being listed,
> as these are in different repositories, often from the same distribution?
> Note that I have included both SL 6x repository versions (64 and 32 bit) in
> the list shown by the GUI under System -> Software Sources.

Don't.... do this. The likelihood of damaging conflicts is quite high,
especially when the 32-bit version of something overlaps and conflicts
with the 64-bit version, and the 32-bit version has been published in
a higher version number in the 32-bit repository. (This happens
especially when packages are not yet tested or compatble with a new
version in 64-bit.

Instead, take a good look at the yum "config.py" file, at
/usr/lib/python/2.6/site-packages/yum/config.py. That's where the
setting is for "multilib_policy" set to "best", instead of to "all"
This can also be set in /etc/yum.conf as follows:

      # Activate multi-architecure by default
      multilib_policy=all

And you can enable, or disable, that option as needed.