My newly installed FC6 x86_64 system seems to have lots
of duplicate packages, where the installer loaded both
the i386 and x86_64 versions.

I first noticed this when running yum to load updates.
For example, from yum.log:

> Dec 20 09:43:18 Updated: dbus.x86_64 1.0.1-8.fc6
> Dec 20 09:43:20 Updated: dbus.i386 1.0.1-8.fc6
> Dec 20 09:43:35 Updated: dbus-devel.x86_64 1.0.1-8.fc6
> Dec 20 09:43:36 Updated: dbus-devel.i386 1.0.1-8.fc6
> Dec 20 09:43:37 Updated: dbus-x11.x86_64 1.0.1-8.fc6

The following pipeline finds all packages installed with
more than one architecture:

rpm -qa --queryformat '%-20{ARCH} %{NAME}\n'|sort -k2|uniq -D -s20

This outputs 578 lines, indicating that 289 packages are
installed in both architectures.  Here's a sample of the
output:

> i386                 alsa-lib
> x86_64               alsa-lib
> x86_64               apr
> i386                 apr
> i386                 apr-util
> x86_64               apr-util
> x86_64               aspell
> i386                 aspell
> x86_64               atk
> i386                 atk
> i386                 at-spi
> x86_64               at-spi
> x86_64               audiofile
> i386                 audiofile
> i386                 audit-libs
> x86_64               audit-libs
> x86_64               avahi
> i386                 avahi
> i386                 avahi-glib
> x86_64               avahi-glib
> x86_64               beecrypt
> i386                 beecrypt
[snip]
> x86_64               mkinitrd
> i386                 mkinitrd
> x86_64               mysql
> i386                 mysql
> i386                 mysql-devel
> x86_64               mysql-devel


Is this normal?

Doing "rpm -ql" indicates that the 64-bit version contains
all the files in the 32-bit rpm, so why is it necessary to
have both?

How does RPM manage this so you end up with the right libraries
installed?

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Jim Garrison wrote:

> My newly installed FC6 x86_64 system seems to have lots
> of duplicate packages, where the installer loaded both
> the i386 and x86_64 versions.

<snip>

> Is this normal?

Yes this is normal, but to be fair and honest many of the 32-bit packages
are not really needed. Some are required for compatibility reasons with
other third party packages (the 32-bit mplayer and AdobeReader packages
come to mind). The 32-bit libs are needed for the 32-bit applications just
like the 64-bit libs are needed for the 64-bit applications, neither can
work without the proper (32 or 64 bit) libs installed.


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[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Jim Garrison <jhg@athensgroup.com> did eloquently scribble:
> My newly installed FC6 x86_64 system seems to have lots
> of duplicate packages, where the installer loaded both
> the i386 and x86_64 versions.

This is correct.
X86-64 linux can run both 32 and 64 bit applications.
But in order to run 32 bit programs, they require the 32 bit libraries.
(hence the duplication)

> How does RPM manage this so you end up with the right libraries
> installed?

64 bit libraries end up in the lib64 directories, while the standard 32 bit
ones end up in the /lib directories. (so they don't clash)
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