AMD64 Linux documentation

[Gene C.]

First of all, thank you Jeremy, Jakub, et al ... this is excellent 
information!  So lets see if I understood what you said --

1.  For libraries, I believe I understand now that the loader determines which 
set of libraries (32 bit or 64 bit) are needed and does the right thing.

2.  For myself (and I suspect many others also), and AMD64 system will be used 
and an run mostly 64 bit applications.  If I need to compile (or build an 
rpm) for a 32 bit application, I will do that on a 32 bit system so I will 
not need any 32 bit devel (header) files.  If I install the 64 bit devel 
packages, then I should get the appropriate header and other data files for 
my 64 bit system.

3.  For non-header data files (/etc or /usr/share), the md5sum values should 
match so rpm will ignore conflicts.

4.  Now for the /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, and /usr/X11R6/bin program 
files, you really want the 64 bit versions ... unless there is no 64 bit 
version in which case you want the ix86 version.  You really do not want any 
of the "color 0" 32 bit files installed if there is a 64 bit version.

I assume that anaconda can be/has been tweaked to do the right thing about 
making sure the the x86_64 package is installed last.

I would assume that up2date (or whatever its replacement become) may be harder 
to do but is still do-able.

The good news is that rpm -Uvh --force glibc-2* will most likely do the right 
thing also do to sort order (good thing the packages are not "amd64" instead 
of "x86_64").

The bad news is that an individual could still screw things up and make a 
system unusable.  For example, if the packages are installed in the wrong 
order.  There should be some deterministic way to tell rpm to NOT install any 
color 0 files of the "lower order" architecture no matter what order the 
packages are installed.

I also suspect that rpm -Fvh is not going to work (or work correctly) where I 
need to install "the same" package name/version/release but for both 
architectures.

I do not know how many copies of RHEL 3 for the amd64 Red Hat has sold so far 
but do you have any experience as far as users updating their systems ... has 
anyone screwed their systems by installing updates in the "wrong order"?

BTW, is there some manuals documenting this (package application order, etc.) 
which come with the RHEL systems (but are not open source)?  Since I have not 
purchased a copy (yet), I have not seen the documentation that comes with 
these systems.
-- 
Gene