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.

(2) how to enable that the packages are bulk-installable via a simple 
selection mechanism using the above mentioned GUI application?

There used to be a configuration syntax for yum and/or one of the 
software package installation utilities such that other architectures 
were displayed and installable using the GUI application.

Note that the underlying X86-64 hardware is polymorphic, being capable 
of executing programs for both 64 bit and IA-32 instruction set 
architectures.  For this polymorphic capability to be expressed in the 
environment requires library (e.g., .so) and ldd support -- the X86-64 
2.6 (and 3.x) linux kernel is capable of controlling both 64 bit and 32 
bit applications if the appropriate libraries and system utilities can 
be used.

Yasha Karant