What is the status of multiarch for 11.10?

Question

What is the planned status of Multiarch support in 11.10? In AMD64 Alpha 1, I attempted to install the i386 google chrome package using dpkg. The install failed citing architecture mismatches, Is support for this kind of install planned or am I missing something?

Solution 1

Install 32-bit Compatibility Libraries

Have you tried installing the 32-bit libraries?

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

If that's installed, then navigate to the Chrome .deb package and use (to force installation):

sudo dpkg --force-architecture -i <name-of-package>.deb

And if things aren't working at first, try re-configuring the package manager:

sudo apt-get install -f

Or...

sudo dpkg --configure -a

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Download Native 64-bit Google Chrome

Alternatively, you can just install the native 64-bit Chrome package from here at Google.

Just remember that Oneiric is still in Alpha, many things can go wrong; don't be surprised if it doesn't work initially!

Reference:

Ubuntu Forums

Solution 2

The plans for multiarch support in Oneiric are here:

• https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/foundations-o-multiarch-next-steps

(It could likely be broken in the Alpha)

Solution 3

When I updated to Oneiric, I lost the ability to exec 32 bit bins. I was able to find the ia32-libs-multiarch package, which was what ultimately got me back and running.

Curiously, aptitude install ia32-libs-multiarch led to some grotesque and unexpected dependency issues (particularly, it broke on libmysqlclient16.) Using the old apt-get did the trick, however.

Solution 4

Multiarch is supported pretty well at this point (last time I tried was Beta 1). It's just that a package must be build with support for Multiarch. You can see whether a package was built for Multiarch by checking it dependencies for the multiarch-support package.

For a more in-depth answer on Multiarch, see Is it possible to have 32 bit libraries installed on a 64 bit system?

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Comments

[Mark Bidewell]

Thanks for the dpkg info, I need to use a 32-bit browser to support the Juniper VPN which only works with a 32 bit browser/plugin

[Alex Stevens]

@Mark, glad to help. And as Jorge posted, Multi-arch will appear natively (hopefully soon) instead of through abstraction libraries. Sorry, I missed that bit of the question :S