Re: Instead of chroot for i386

[Adam Skutt <askutt@wnec.edu>]

Tong wrote:
> My understand that the solo reason for the i386 chroot to exist is to
> avoid messing up 64bit and 32bit libraries. Is that so? 

Nope, it's because debian's packaging system isn't intelligent enough to 
handle two architectures in the same installation.

Linux can handle 32 and 64-bit libraries side by side at the same time 
just fine.
> I'm running an i386 Debian Sarge perfectly well, and I have sufficient
> spare partitions to test AMD64 Sarge. In this case, is it ok just to
> append my i386 tool paths to the PATH and add i386 library paths to
> ldconfig?
If you want, but I'd mount the whole tree and use it as a chroot.  For 
other reasons, you're going to want to bind mount certain portions of 
your 64bit install into the 32bit one or vice-versa, depending on which 
one is master.
> To me, theoretically it should work, and it is much much simpler than
> doing a brand new i386 chroot install. 
I don't think so.  The chroot'd install is really a slave install and 
doesn't need to be a full, bootable debian install (nor do you really 
want it to be),

Adam