If you're running newer hardware, there are some definite advantages to installing a 64-bit operating system. But, if you still need to run any 32-bit applications, you'll need to have the 32-bit support libraries installed. Different Linux distros handle this in different ways.
For 64-bit Ubuntu, finding the proper 32-bit support packages is a simple matter of opening up the Synaptic Package Manager, and searching for the string “ia32”. With 64-bit openSuSE, 32-bit support is already built-in, so you don't have to do anything. With Fedora, though, it's a whole different story. Not only are the 32-bit packages not already installed, the Fedora folk don't provide any documentation on how to install them. The directions I found via Google were outdated, and wouldn't work. I finally resolved the problem by asking a Red Hat employee in my local Linux Users Group.
Add an “rpm” Macro
You'll need this later, in order to verify that the procedure worked. Add the following line to the “/etc/rpm/macros” file:
By having to use the entire package name, all the way up through the arch designation, we open ourselves up to a slight problem. That is, package version numbers are also part of the package names. So, by the time you read this, the script may have been partially broken due to Fedora packages having been updated to newer versions. Here's the way around that.
Go ahead and do the procedure as written. Then, as root, run the following command:
for i in $(< Fedora-ia32.txt ); do rpm -q >> rpm_results.txt $i; done
If package versions have changed, you'll see a “not installed” error message for it in the output file. Then, you can open Yum Extender, and search for the update version to install.
Conclusion
The reason that the directions that I found via Google didn't work, is that the package list referenced the “i386” packages that were part of Fedora 10. With Fedora 11, the “i386” packages have been replaced by “i586” packages.
