Hi Chris,
This is a feature of yum in RHEL5 and SL5.
I just double checked to see if this was fixed with 5.4. Nope.
Why does it do that?
Because at some point yum and/or RedHat decided that would be the thing 
to do so developers would quit whining about not having their 32 bit 
libraries.
(Don't roll your eyes too much. There are plenty of developers/users 
here  on the scientific-linux-users list that have complained because 
their favorite 32 bit library wasn't installed by default on a 64 bit 
machine)
I have checked Fedora 11, and it only installs the arch that you are 
running, and it is almost the same version of yum that is in RHEL 5.4, 
so I'm thinking it is a feature put in by RedHat.

Could I track down and change yum so that it doesn't do this?  Yes.
Am I going to do it?  No.
Why?  Because that would change the functionality of yum on SL5.  This 
could unexpected results.  The one expected result that I don't want is 
that when someone does an x86_64 install, they would get different 
packages after the change than before the change.

How to really fix it?
First complain upstream to RedHat.  I do know that this was brought up 
to RedHat at the Summit when discussing RHEL 6.  If this feature makes 
it into the main RHEL, it will make it into SL.
If it is possible for there to be an easy fix so that we could make a 
SL_ rpm, that would be good.  But I personally will not dig through yum 
to find that fix, I just have too much other stuff to do.  But if 
someone has an easy fix, I wouldn't mind wrapping it into an SL_ rpm.

Thanks
Troy

Chris Tooley wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> It's me again with an annoying question.
> 
> When I try to install subversion on a 64bit machine with dag and 
> sl-security repos enabled I get these sorts of results:
> ..............................................................................
> [root@machine yum.repos.d]# uname -rm
> 2.6.18-128.1.1.el5 x86_64
> [root@machine yum.repos.d]# yum install subversion
> Loaded plugins: kernel-module
> sl-base 
>              | 1.1 kB     00:00
> primary.xml.gz 
>              | 905 kB     00:00
> sl-base                                                        3409/3409
> dag 
>              | 1.1 kB     00:00
> primary.xml.gz 
>              | 3.4 MB     00:01
> dag                                                            9353/9353
> sl-security 
>              |  951 B     00:00
> primary.xml.gz 
>              | 234 kB     00:00
> sl-security                                                    693/693
> Excluding Packages in global exclude list
> Finished
> Setting up Install Process
> Parsing package install arguments
> Resolving Dependencies
> --> Running transaction check
> ---> Package subversion.x86_64 0:1.6.5-0.1.el5.rf set to be updated
> ---> Package subversion.i386 0:1.4.2-4.el5_3.1 set to be updated
> --> Finished Dependency Resolution
> Beginning Kernel Module Plugin
> Finished Kernel Module Plugin
> 
> Dependencies Resolved
> 
> ===========================================================================================================
>   Package                 Arch                Version 
>       Repository                Size
> ===========================================================================================================
> Installing:
>   subversion              x86_64              1.6.5-0.1.el5.rf 
>       dag                      6.8 M
>   subversion              i386                1.4.2-4.el5_3.1 
>       sl-security              2.3 M
> 
> Transaction Summary
> ===========================================================================================================
> Install      2 Package(s)
> Update       0 Package(s)
> Remove       0 Package(s)
> 
> Total download size: 9.1 M
> Is this ok [y/N]: n
> Exiting on user Command
> Complete!
> ..............................................................................
> 
> Is there a reason why yum wants to install the i386 version of 
> subversion on an x86_64 machine?  Have I misconfigured something somewhere?
> 
> contents of sl-security.repo:
> ..............................................................................
> [sl-security]
> name=SL 5 security updates
> baseurl=http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/53/$basearch/updates/security
>  
> http://ftp1.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/53/$basearch/updates/security
>  
> ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/53/$basearch/updates/security
> #mirrorlist=ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/mirrorlist/sl-security-53.txt
> enabled=1
> gpgcheck=0
> # To use priorities you must have yum-priorities installed
> priority=10
> gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-sl 
> file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-sl5 
> file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-csieh 
> file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-dawson 
> file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-jpolok 
> file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-cern 
> file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-5
> ..............................................................................
> 
> contents of dag.repo:
> ..............................................................................
> [dag]
> name=DAG rpms
> baseurl=http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/extra/dag/redhat/el5/en/$basearch/dag/
>  
> http://ftp1.scientificlinux.org/linux/extra/dag/redhat/el5/en/$basearch/dag/
>  
> ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/extra/dag/redhat/el5/en/$basearch/dag/
> enabled=1
> # To use priorities you must have yum-priorities installed
> priority=30
> ..............................................................................
> 
> Please let me know if you need more information.  I can selectively 
> install the x86_64 package by:
> yum install subversion.x86_64
> so it's OK in the end, but it seems kind of weird to me to install an 
> i386 package in x86_64.
> 
> The same thing happens with xdelta too, but the i386 package is from 
> sl-base instead of sl-security.
> 
> Thanks,
> ~Chris


-- 
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Troy Dawson  [log in to unmask]  (630)840-6468
Fermilab  ComputingDivision/LCSI/CSI LMSS Group
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