newbie's question: Why .i386.rpm and .x86_64.rpm can have the exact same files?

Robinson Tiemuqinke hahaha_30k at yahoo.com
Wed Mar 1 07:48:09 UTC 2006


Hi,

 I'm installing several AMD 64bit machines, and I've
also installed 32bit compatibility for legacy
programs.

 But unfortunately, I've found a "strange" phenomenon:
a pair of same name packages, one is i386 version and
another is x86_64 version, can be installed at the
same time without confliction, although they contains
the same set of files, either exectible binaries and
libraries or simple documents.

 Let's give an example (mysql) listed below, bith
mysql.i386 and mysql.x86_64 includes /usr/bin/mysql/
but are installed without confliction.

 Then I got confused here (not FC4 OS). :) If I just
run 'mysql' from command line, which version (i386,
x86_64) of mysql will be run? If I remove one version,
say mysql.x86_64, then the file /usr/bin/mysql will
get deleted? or it just downgrade to 32bit version
only? If the latter is the case, then where does FC4
Linux save the 32bit version binary?

 My questions seems pretty riduclous because I'm a
newbie to 64bit world. Plaese help. 

 I will be very appreciated if someone can give me
some reference sites about this 32bit|64bit rpm
introduction.

[user02 at testserver01 ~]# rpm -q --queryformat
'%{name}-%{version}-%{release}.%{arch}\n' mysql
mysql-4.1.16-1.FC4.1.x86_64
mysql-4.1.16-1.FC4.1.i386
[user02 at testserver01 ~]# rpm -ql mysql.x86_64 |head -5
/etc/ld.so.conf.d/mysql-x86_64.conf
/etc/my.cnf
/usr/bin/msql2mysql
/usr/bin/mysql
/usr/bin/mysql_config
[user02 at testserver01 ~]# rpm -ql mysql.i386 |head -5
/etc/ld.so.conf.d/mysql-i386.conf
/etc/my.cnf
/usr/bin/msql2mysql
/usr/bin/mysql
/usr/bin/mysql_config




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