ia32-libs and dynamic loading paths

[Christoph Best <cx_debian@ttdom.de>]

Hi-

I noticed that both on debian and the ubuntu-debian there are some
problems associated with running ia32 applications under amd64 without
a chroot caused by the explicit loading of dynamic libraries, e.g. by
libX11.so.2 loading the locale dependent libraries in
/usr/X11R6/lib/locale/lib/common. This causes the "X11 locale not
supported" errors many users experience, e.g. when running a 32-bit
JVM or firefox. A similar problem is in libpango loading modules from
/usr/lib/pango/1.4.0/modules/. I think libpam should also be affected
but it is not in ia32-libs.

Both problems can be circumvented by setting the appropriate
environment variables XLOCALEDIR and PANGO_RC_FILE to point to a
32-bit subtree. This however requires an explicit setup for every
32-bit program and also could cause problems if a 32-bit program
invokes a 64-bit program.

I think the right way to solve this would be to compile libX11 and
libpango for ia32-libs with the 32-bit paths as defaults - is there
some reason why people are not doing this yet I am missing?

Thanks!
-Christoph
-- 
Christoph Best                                      cbst at tigertiger de
Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry, Munich      http://tigertiger.de/cb