Why is my system architecture i386 on a 64-bit processor?

Question

Recently, a small message appeared on my Gmail, notifying me that my google chrome version isn't compatible anymore. So I tried to update my chrome (I didn't take care about my chrome version from quite a while, I'm on version 45.0.2454.99).

So I followed the instructions given by chrome itself and it downloaded google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb for my Debian.

When I tried to install it using:

dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb    

It trowed me an error:

 dpkg: error processing archive google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
 (--install):  package architecture (amd64) does not match system
 (i386)

Until today I suspected my computer be 64 bits, so I ran uname -a

Linux MyComp 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u4 (2015-09-19) x86_64 GNU/Linux

"free" command shows that my SO understands there are 8gigs of ram:

            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
 Mem:       8071684    5521740    2549944     325624     360696    1918748

Added edit: Still dpkg --print-architecture produces i386

What's the deal with my OS? Is or not x64? Why can't upgrade my chrome?

I understand chrome stopped 32 bit support but that shouldn't be a problem for me is it?

Launching apt-get install google-chrome-stable gives me:

google-chrome-stable is already the newest version.

EDIT:

So after following the instructions of doing the following:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture amd64
sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get -f install

It got messed up even more.

$google-chrome

[1:1:0323/093649:ERROR:image_metadata_extractor.cc(114)] Couldn't load libexif. libexif.so.12: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory [26967:26967:0323/093649:ERROR:browser_main_loop.cc(245)] GTK theme error: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "xfce", (10 times)

Aborted

Same when i launch google-chrome-stable

Right now im using chronium 45 since i installed it before "properly" installing chrome.

Tried to remove the architecture but:

dpkg: error: cannot remove architecture 'amd64' currently in use by the database

Whitch is kinda spected but not desirable as well.

Result:

Well, it ended up on a full reinstal, chrome is not the only aplication that gave me problems and since this seemed a synthom of some kind of wrong/bad installation, i decided to just take the time to do it from 0, keeping some files on /home/backupuser and formatting root.

Thanks for all the help

Solution

Your system has a 64-bit kernel with 32-bit userspace, which is perfectly valid. Since Chrome is no longer updated for 32-bit systems, you need to enable support for 64-bit userspace; on Debian this is as easy as

sudo dpkg --add-architecture amd64
sudo apt-get update

Then you should be able to install the Chrome package, presumably with errors since you won't have the libraries installed; but

sudo apt-get -f install

should fix that; unfortunately the dependency list in the google-chrome package isn't complete, so you'll probably need to install

sudo apt-get install libexif12:amd64 libpulse0:amd64

to get Chrome running properly.

Cross-grading an i386 userspace to amd64 is also possible, but it's far more complicated and risky.

Comments

[Alen Milakovic]

What is "cross-grading"?

[Alen Milakovic]

Oh, I see. Converting an i386 installation to amd64, for example.

[Stephen Kitt]

@FaheemMitha exactly, a.k.a. "cross-grading an i386 userspace to amd64" ;-). I'll update my answer to include the link.

[Leo Armentano]

@StephenKitt Didint work as spected, edited the question to add the response

[Stephen Kitt]

@LeoArmentano the package provided by Google is missing some dependency information, see my edit.

[MagicFab]

Consider completely removing your current chrome package and reinstalling it, perhaps also using the actual Debian packages.

[Sridhar Sarnobat]

My Google Chrome AMD 64 installation succeeds but when I run it I get cannot execute binary file: Exec format error