Fedora 8 on PS3: ppc or ppc64?

[Ian Chapman]

Andrea wrote:

> I can't really understand whether the Playstation 3 running Fedora 8 is 
> supposed to be ppc or ppc64.

I believe it's supposed to be ppc64, but I don't own a PS3. Running 
uname -a will tell you whether you're running a 64bit or 32bit kernel. 
Ie if you see ppc64 in the line, it's the 64bit kernel.

> For instance: I cannot install alsa-lib-devel for both because they 
> provide the same documentation files that conflict.

If this is the case, then it's a multilib bug and you should report it 
against the relevant package in bugzilla.

> The same for gdb-ppc and gdb-ppc64. I have both RPMs installed, but gdb 
> is in the same path for both: /usr/bin/gdb and only the last survives, 
> the first is overwritten? How can they be both coexist.

 From my understanding, this is actually normal. For the executable 
files themselves, you can only have one binary installed, either the 
32bit version or the 64bit version. On a ppc64 system, 32bit binaries 
are preferred over 64bit binaries. So in other words, if you have BOTH 
the 32bit RPM and the 64bit RPM installed, the binaries in /usr/bin and 
similar directories should be 32bit. If you need the 64bit binary then 
only the 64bit RPM should be installed. Note, that is the opposite to 
x86_64 which prefers 64bit over 32bit.

> I've got plenty of duplicate applications (firefox, gdb, aspell...) but 
> since they have the same path, I can actually run only 1 of them.

Yep, this is correct. Supposedly there's little advantage in running 
64bit apps vs 32bit apps on PPC for the majority of software, unlike 
x86_64 which can see a lot of differences because of 32bit x86 being 
register starved.

> Only libs are in separate paths
> 
> /usr/lib and /usr/lib64

Yep this correct too.


-- 
Ian Chapman.