Installing 32-bit Fedora on 64-bit Debian

Guide to install a 32-bit Fedora guest into a 64-bit Debian host.

Set up yum repository

host# mkdir /etc/rpm
host# mkdir /var/lib/rpm
host# apt-get install yum linux32
host# cp -a /usr/lib/util-vserver/distributions/fc6/{yum,yum.repos.d} /etc/vservers/.distributions/fc6

vserver build does not use /etc/yum*, though you will see an ignorable error message about it if it doesn't exist.

Edit the files /etc/vservers/.distributions/fc6/yum.repos.d/fedora-{core,updates,extras}.repo

• Uncomment the first baseurl= line of each file (by removing the leading # character)

Proxy

If you use a proxy, append to /etc/vservers/.distributions/fc6/yum/yum.conf (in the [main] section) a line of the form:

proxy=http://proxy.yourcompany.com:3128

Build vserver

host# export ARCH=i386
host# export http_proxy=http://proxy.yourcompany.com:3128
host# linux32 vserver fedora-zod-32-gustname build -m yum --context 42 --hostname=fedora-zod-32-guestname --interface dummy0=eth0:10.0.0.123/8 --rootdir /var/lib/vservers -- -d fc6 -- --arch i386
host# unset ARCH

you may also create /etc/rpm/platform file:

guest# vi /etc/rpm/platform
i386-redhat-linux-gnu

this way yum and rpm will use i386 packages

NOTE: You may get an error "AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'Context'" when executing this (Debian Lenny 5.0.3) because the gpgme package is too old. You can simply edit the misc.py file and early out that function that fails and the process will continue just fine. See http://openvz.org/pipermail/users/2009-January/002554.html for details.

Verify

To observe the 32-bitness of the guest's applications, do:

host# linux32 vyum fedora-zod-32-guestname -- install file
host# vserver fedora-zod-32-guestname start
host# vserver fedora-zod-32-guestname enter
fedora-zod-32-guestname# file /bin/ls
/bin/ls: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.9, stripped

or

host# file /var/lib/vservers/fedora-zod-32-guestname/bin/ls
/var/lib/vservers/fedora-zod-32-guestname/bin/ls: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.6.9, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.9, stripped

See also

• Building Guest Systems
• Installing Ubuntu on Debian