[Bug 1017333] Re: multiarch doesn't really work

[David Kalnischkies]

Nobody said that crossgrades are supported yet, but even then it is not
a problem in APT. A foreign package like perl-base which is not marked
accordingly can't satisfy a dependency for a native packages and v.v. as
it is defined in the spec (I suppose dpkg is equally unhappy about the
current system: dpkg --audit). So yes, you shouldn't "upgrade" your i386
systems to amd64 just yet now that we barely can install some packages
from i386 on amd64.

You need to crossgrade at least a couple more packages (at least
essential set) by hand for now to fix your system - closing as invalid
as APT is able to cope with a mixed system, but the packages need to
support that, which they are not currently. So you might want to refer
to reporting bugs and patches to packages which are not yet
multiarchified.

** Changed in: apt (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Invalid

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1017333

Title:
  multiarch doesn't really work

Status in “apt” package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  So, following along with https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MultiarchSpec and
  specifically the (Shawn) use-case of upgrading an i386 system to
  amd64, I've upgraded the kernel to amd64 and booted it successfully.
  I've also got the required amd64 libs installed and I've successfully
  upgrade dpkg and apt to the amd64 versions.

  # dpkg --print-architecture
  amd64
  # dpkg --print-foreign-architectures
  i386

  I thought at this point I was supposed to have a happy dual-arch based
  system, but that doesn't seem to be the case.  apt-get check lists a
  whole litany of dependency failures.  But to just take the first one
  for example:

  # apt-get check
  ...
  adduser : Depends: perl-base (>= 5.6.0) but it is not installable
  ...

  dpkg shows the following states for those packages:
  ii  adduser                                     3.113ubuntu2                                add and remove users and groups
  in  perl-base                                   <none>                                      (no description available)
  ii  perl-base:i386                              5.14.2-6ubuntu2                             minimal Perl system

  So the question is, is the perl-base:i386 package not enough to
  satisfy adduser's dependency on perl-base?  If not, then there is no
  hope that multi-arch can be at all useful and I will need to upgrade
  everything to amd64 right?

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
  Package: apt (not installed)
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-24.37-generic 3.2.14
  Uname: Linux 3.2.0-24-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu7
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Sun Jun 24 23:29:43 2012
  ProcEnviron:
   TERM=screen
   LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: apt
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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