help with multiarch software installs

[rgara]

Clean install of:

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 11.10
Release:        11.10
Codename:       oneiric
uname -a
Linux rich-EliteBook 3.0.0-15-generic #26-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jan 20 17:23:00 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I need to install 32 bit firefox and java in order to install run my vpn. I got it to work on Fedora, but would rather use kubuntu, particularly after reading about the multiarch support. However, 32 bit firefox won't install

~$ sudo apt-get install firefox:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 firefox:i386 : Depends: psmisc:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                Depends: debianutils:i386 (>= 1.16) but it is not going to be installed
                Depends: libstartup-notification0:i386 (>= 0.8) but it is not going to be installed
                Recommends: ubufox:i386 but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

So far, while troubleshooting, I've installed a number of 32 bit libs. This:

sudo apt-get install binutils-multiarch

And this:

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs-multiarch:i386

I've also tried to download and run 32 bit firefox manually from the firefox website:

rich@rich-EliteBook:~/apps/firefox$ ldd ./firefox
        linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xf77e0000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0xf77b0000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0xf77ab000)
        libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0xf76bf000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0xf7695000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xf7677000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0xf74fb000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xf77e1000)
$ ./firefox
XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /home/rich/apps/firefox/libxpcom.so:
libxul.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Couldn't load XPCOM.

With the above, I tried setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the firefox directory, but that doesn't work either.

Anyone have suggestions? Is there anything I need to do in order to force apt-get to install the 32 bit dependencies when I try apt-get install firefox:i386?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[SteveRiley]

Perhaps you also need multiarch-support?

steve@x1:~$ apt-cache show multiarch-support
Package: multiarch-support
Priority: required
Description-en: Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibility
 This is a transitional package used to ensure multiarch support is present
 in ld.so before unpacking libraries to the multiarch directories.  It can
 be removed once nothing on the system depends on it.

Its pre-depends list is huge, could be that one or more of the i386 libraries needs it but for some reason it's missing.

Also...what's your VPN product? My employer uses a Juniper gateway. I have a Java applet for Juniper VPNs that works fine with 32-bit Java but doesn't require a 32-bit browser.

[rgara]

Thanks so much for your note Steve.

I've sort of solved this. In the least, I have 32 firefox and 32 bit java installed and my vpn is running. I did a new, clean install from disk. Updated all libs and downloaded the new kernel. Then all I had to do was this:

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

This installs a TON of 32 bit libraries. Then I manually downloaded 32 bit firefox:

rich@rich-HP:~/apps$ tar -xvf firefox-10.0.tar.bz2

Running firefox spews a ton of errors. Setting this environment variable cleans up many of them:

rich@rich-HP:~/apps/firefox$ export GDK_PIXBUF_MODULE_FILE=/usr/lib32/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/2.10.0/loaders.cache

That doesn't clean up all the errors:

rich@rich-HP:~/apps/firefox$ ./firefox
/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64

(firefox:4121): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to load type module: /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so

/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64

(firefox:4121): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to load type module: /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so

/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64

(firefox:4121): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to load type module: /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so

/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64

(firefox:4121): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to load type module: /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so

/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64

(firefox:4121): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to load type module: /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so

/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64

(firefox:4121): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to load type module: /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so

I actually followed the dependency tree and manually installed the 32 bit library libraries required to fix that error. However, in doing so apt-get REMOVED some of the corresponding 64 bit libraries. Here is a snippet:

rich@rich-EliteBook:~/apps/firefox$ sudo apt-get install appmenu-gtk:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  gedit-common libyelp0 libgtksourceview-3.0-0 liblaunchpad-integration-common liblaunchpad-integration-3.0-1 launchpad-integration libpeas-common libgtksourceview-3.0-common yelp
  gnome-user-guide yelp-xsl
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  libdbusmenu-glib4:i386 libdbusmenu-gtk4:i386
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 libdbusmenu-glib4 libdbusmenu-gtk3-4 libdbusmenu-gtk4
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  appmenu-gtk:i386 libdbusmenu-glib4:i386 libdbusmenu-gtk4:i386
0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 5 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 85.5 kB of archives.

And so when running 64 bit apps, I get the same libmenu error. So I'll live with those errors when running 32 bit firefox. My take away is that multi-arch support is not fully baked yet and that only a few programs are configured to fully use it.

To answer your other questions, I'm using a juniper VPN too. I've spent days trying to get it to work. In my travels, I found many guides. This one was the most encouraging:

http://www.joshhardman.net/juniper-n...-linux-64-bit/

I'm guessing you are doing something similar? I was able to follow along right up until the end when starting the vpn. nsvc would simply exit. From more poking around, I found some information that suggests the reason I couldn't get it to work was because our realm name has a space in it.

At any rate, I have the vpn working now using 32 bit firefox and 32 bit java. Oh, and I believe multi-arch support was enabled on my install by default. I didn't do anything to explicitly turn it on. My output looks like yours:

rich@rich-HP:~$ apt-cache show multiarch-support
Package: multiarch-support
Priority: required
Section: libs
Installed-Size: 204
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Original-Maintainer: GNU Libc Maintainers <debian-glibc@lists.debian.org>
Architecture: amd64
Source: eglibc
Version: 2.13-20ubuntu5
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.6-2)
Filename: pool/main/e/eglibc/multiarch-support_2.13-20ubuntu5_amd64.deb
Size: 4478
MD5sum: a86918269b1213a2a6d15c5af7f27b97
SHA1: ffe8b913d70233ea15ad33f27d53fe6ef32b5355
SHA256: 950b7c5e1f1830c36544ce697825561734e16a3aca68bfaad6b9c49444b84973
Description-en: Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibility
 This is a transitional package used to ensure multiarch support is present
 in ld.so before unpacking libraries to the multiarch directories.  It can
 be removed once nothing on the system depends on it.
Multi-Arch: foreign
Homepage: http://www.eglibc.org
Description-md5: f70fd4ad370040691119c10d77aec677
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Origin: Ubuntu
Supported: 18m
Task: minimal

Thanks again for the feedback.

[SteveRiley]

For the Juniper VPN, I used the script and GUI app from Mad Scientist.

[rgara]

I just tried to use that script again and it doesn't work for me. I assume it is because my realm name contains a space.

Just out of curiosity - does your VPN realm name contain a space?

[SteveRiley]

Just out of curiosity - does your VPN realm name contain a space?

It doesn't.

What if you try to escape the space? Put a \ in front of the space. Or try %20 -- although that one feels more like a guess than anything else.