lubuntu-desktop team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Marsden <jmarsden@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Please would everyone note that in the world of Debian and Ubuntu
packages, chromium is a game, and chromium-browser is a browser :)

> On Dec 22, 2011 8:43 AM, Phill Whiteside <phillw@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Removing Chromium using the two different commands provides massively
> different results. This was 1st reported on IRC and the pastebin [1]
> of the output is now available. If one of the 'guru's could take a
> look at it, it's way beyond my limited expertise!


> [1] http://paste.ubuntu.com/778561/


It pays to stick with apt-get or aptitude and not mix them.  However,
that doesn't really fully explain this.

At a quick glance, I have a suspicion that the issue could be related to
line 141 of that pastebin page:

  141)     ia32-libs recommends ia32-libs-multiarch

Hmmm... ia32libs is *not* a default install on Lubuntu (or Ubuntu!) as
far as I know.  Therefore, it appears that someone has probably been
experimenting with running 32bit-only closed-source proprietary apps on
a 64bit OS installation, and has got themselves (or aptitude, or
something) into a bit of a mess.  ia32-libs is a fairly nastly hack,
IMO, and should only be used by people who thoroughly understand what it
does and how it works (and I don't fully understand that myself!).

I admit that I do use la32-libs, very reluctantly, to run Skype on my
amd64 Ubuntu Lucid install, but that's *not* a recommendation of it.
Multi-arch support in Ubuntu is improving, but I don't think it is
"there" yet.

To explore this further, can we ask:

 (a) Who or what installed ia32-libs, and for what purpose?

 (b) Was the chromium-browser being removed a 32bit i386
     chromium-browser, or a 64bit amd64 chromium-browser?


     dpkg-query -W -f='${Package} ${Version}\t${Architecture}\n' chromium-browser


     should help answer that one.

 (c) Can this issue be duplicated from a fresh Lubuntu install, and if
     so, what are the exact set of steps needed to do so?

 (d) What do the following commands output on the affected system?

     uname -a ; echo $(lsb_release -cdrs)
     aptitude why ia32-libs

  (e) Lastly (this could generate a lot of output!), what is the output
      from:

      aptitude -Wvs remove chromium-browser

Jonathan