Nicholas -- >While running Fedora Core 2 x86_64 on AMD Opterons I have noticed >something odd about compiling programs which link to shared libraries... This is a pet peeve of mine. The athlon 64 chips can run either 64-bit or 32-bit programs at will, and the modern kernels are set up to run either -- this is called biarch. The two architectures have separate shared library directories (e.g. /usr/X11R6/lib for 32-bit and /usr/X11R6/lib64 for 64-bit) which is necessary because, for example, function calls with addresses as arguments do not look the same. A lot of the time this works fine, but some packages have configuration information that is different for the two architectures in the same place; for example, gdk-pixbuf has configuration information in /etc/gtk-2.0 that conflicts between the two versions. Perhaps the x86_64 RPMs should be arranged to include both with suitable configuration files that handle both as well as some sort of flag that tells rpm that this package satisfies the i386 dependencies as well. Another possibility is that making rpm edit the config files in /etc rather than just installing them (like rpm does for kernel installation of grub.conf) could give you a good config file whether you install the i386 version, the x86_64 version, or both. Anyway, I think we should think of the current biarch configuration as being broken until there is a better way of handling both sets of all the commonly-used shared libraries. I'm sorry this has turned into a rant,* but this has been brewing for a while... In terms of practical advice, sometimes it is possible to edit a badly formed Makefile to look at the correct library (e.g. change /usr/X11R6/lib to /usr/X11R6/lib64). Justin Forbes' FC2 x86_64 FAQ page http://www.linuxtx.org/amd64faq.html and his posts here have additional suggestions that can help for packages with well-enough formed ./configure;make. -- Phil *well, maybe not very sorry :-)
