i386/x86_64 rpms on x86_64

[Jonathan Berry]

On 6/19/05, Jack Howarth <howarth at bromo.msbb.uc.edu> wrote:
> Jonathan,
>      Okay, so I read you response to imply that if I used 'rpm -Uvh'
> to install a i386 package which is already installed in the x86_64
> architecture that it would remove the x86_64 version in favor of the
> i386 one, correct?

Actually, I think that it should not.  I haven't tested it, though. 
The two packages are different and handled separately by rpm, so why
would it try to upgrade a different package?  There could be problems
if the two packages share some files, in which case they probably are
not meant to be used together.  Again, if you saw the FC3 perl upgrade
problem, this is what was going on there.

>      Also is it still true that if 'yum install' is used to install
> a package that both the i386 and x86_64 versions will be installed
> if they exist?
>            Jack

Yes, this is correct.  I have seen this several times.  If you want
only one of them, tell yum using the proper extension (.i386 or
.x86_64).  I would advise using yum to install packages over rpm as
the 32-bit packages in the x86_64 yum tree are the ones that are
"officially supported" (for lack of a better term).  The only
exception to this might be firefox.i386 if you want to run it
*instead* of the 64-bit version to use flash and/or java.

Jonathan