Fedora: Adding an i686 repository on an x86_64 system

IMPORTANT: This post may very well be useless mumbo-jumbo of how to do something that should never be done anyhow. I post it only because I had it all written down neatly when I discovered that I could have skipped it all.

From what I’ve seen, every you’ll need is in the x86_64 repository, including relevant i686 RPMs for 32-bit compilation.

Why I messed up in the first place

The whole saga started when the compiler complained about not having the stubs-32.h file. So I went:

$ yum provides '*/stubs-32.h'
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
glibc-devel-2.11-2.i686 : Object files for development using standard C
                        : libraries.
Repo        : fedora
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/include/gnu/stubs-32.h

<...same package from other sources...>

OK, So let’s install it, shall we?

# yum install glibc-devel-2.11-2.i686
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package glibc-devel.i686 0:2.11-2 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: glibc = 2.11-2 for package: glibc-devel-2.11-2.i686
--> Processing Dependency: glibc-headers = 2.11-2 for package: glibc-devel-2.11-2.i686
--> Processing Dependency: libcidn.so.1 for package: glibc-devel-2.11-2.i686
<...snipped some very similar lines...>
--> Processing Dependency: libnss_dns.so.2 for package: glibc-devel-2.11-2.i686
--> Processing Dependency: libBrokenLocale.so.1 for package: glibc-devel-2.11-2.i686
--> Processing Dependency: libnss_compat.so.2 for package: glibc-devel-2.11-2.i686
--> Running transaction check
---> Package glibc.i686 0:2.11-2 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: glibc-common = 2.11-2 for package: glibc-2.11-2.i686
--> Processing Dependency: libfreebl3.so for package: glibc-2.11-2.i686
--> Processing Dependency: libfreebl3.so(NSSRAWHASH_3.12.3) for package: glibc-2.11-2.i686
---> Package glibc-devel.i686 0:2.11-2 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: glibc-headers = 2.11-2 for package: glibc-devel-2.11-2.i686
--> Running transaction check
---> Package glibc.i686 0:2.11-2 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: glibc-common = 2.11-2 for package: glibc-2.11-2.i686
---> Package glibc-devel.i686 0:2.11-2 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: glibc-headers = 2.11-2 for package: glibc-devel-2.11-2.i686
---> Package nss-softokn-freebl.i686 0:3.12.4-10.fc12 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
glibc-2.11-2.i686 from fedora has depsolving problems
  --> Missing Dependency: glibc-common = 2.11-2 is needed by package glibc-2.11-2.i686 (fedora)
glibc-devel-2.11-2.i686 from fedora has depsolving problems
  --> Missing Dependency: glibc-headers = 2.11-2 is needed by package glibc-devel-2.11-2.i686 (fedora)
Error: Missing Dependency: glibc-headers = 2.11-2 is needed by package glibc-devel-2.11-2.i686 (fedora)
Error: Missing Dependency: glibc-common = 2.11-2 is needed by package glibc-2.11-2.i686 (fedora)
 You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
 You could try running: package-cleanup --problems
                        package-cleanup --dupes
                        rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest

or,  put simply, forget about it, I can’t find the foundation package for 32-bit machines. I tried to enable the updates-testing repository with the –enablerepo=u*g flag to yum, as recommended in an encouraging thread, but it did no good.

Instead, I followed another forum thread, which recommended to brutally remove the existing i686 version, and reinstall the new one:

# rpm --nodeps -e glibc-2.11.1-1.i686
# yum install glibc-devel-2.11-2.i686

But that didn’t work, because “glibc-common = 2.11-2 is needed by package glibc-2.11-2.i686 (fedora)”.

But then it stroke me, that if the problem is the -2 suffix, why don’t I go for the -1 version? I mean, I got the -2 version from “yum whatprovides” on the header file, which probably answered with the latest version, for which there are dependency holes in the repository.

# yum install glibc-devel-2.11.1-1.i686

So the lesson is not to trust “yum whatprovides” blindly. At least not with exact version numbers. If the repository has broken dependencies, sometimes just go back a bit.

The reason I added the i686 repository was that I thought I’ll find the necessary RPMs there. I was wrong on that.

… and here’s how to do it

The idea is to create a new repository configuration file, which declares the i686 repository. These configuration files don’t point at the repository, but rather at an URL, from which a list of mirrors to repositories is listed.

# cd /etc/yum.repos.d
# cp fedora.repo fedora-i686.repo
# replace \$basearch i386 -- fedora-i686.repo

I then edited fedora-i686.repo so that the names in the [ ] headers don’t override those in fedora.repo by adding the i686 string here and there.

That’s it.

Note that the architecture was changed to i386 (with a THREE) and not i686, because when yum fetches for the mirror repository list, it asks for i386 as an architecture. If the address to the mirror list (as defined in the *.repo file with the variable mirrorlist).

$ yum repolist
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
fedora/metalink                                          |  28 kB     00:00
fedora                                                   | 4.2 kB     00:00
fedora/primary_db                                        |  12 MB     00:19
fedora686/metalink                                       |  13 kB     00:00
Could not parse metalink https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=fedora-12&arch=i686 error was
File /var/tmp/yum-eli-X4M9Cd/x86_64/12/fedora686/metalink.xml.tmp is not XML

The file is not an XML, because it contains complaints and not data.