Installing 32-bit Fedora on 64-bit Debian

Set up yum repository

host# mkdir /etc/rpm
host# mkdir /var/lib/rpm
host# apt-get install yum

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 /usr/lib/util-vserver/distributions/fc6/yum.repos.d/fedora-{core,updates,extras}.repo

• Uncomment (remove starting '#' character) from the first baseurl= line of each file
• Change all instances of "$basearch" to "i386". e.g. in vim: :0,$s/$basearch/i386/g
• Some mirrors seem to not respect the architecture choice, so comment out (prepend '#') to the first mirrorlist= line of each file

If you use a proxy, append to /usr/lib/util-vserver/distributions/fc6/yum/yum.conf the line:

proxy=http://proxy.example.com:1234

Build vserver

host# export ARCH=i386
host# export http_proxy=http://proxy.example.com:1234
host# vserver fedora-zod-32-gustname build -m yum --hostname=fedora-zod-32-guestname --interface dummy0=eth0:10.0.0.123/8 --rootdir /var/lib/vservers -- -d fc6 -- --arch i386
host# unset ARCH

Verify

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

host# 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