Wubi installed 12.10 amd64 without configuring i386

On 26 December 2012 23:39, DmitryKX <email address hidden> wrote:
> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
> ia32-libs : Depends: ia32-libs-multiarch but it is not installable
> E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Provide also the output of:
$ apt-cache policy
$ apt-cache policy ia32-libs ia32-libs-multiarch

Have you determined that this is a bug in apt rather than in
ia32-libs-multiarch or some other package?

 status incomplete

Also:
# apt-get install -oDebug::pkgProblemResolver=1 ia32-libs

> Using Ubuntu 12.10 x86_64 on host system and in deboostrapped
> environment. I chrooted to deboostrapped environment and run:

Never mind the previous responses.

ia32-libs-multiarch is available only for i386, all libraries in ia32-libs are multiarch now making that package practically deprecated. What reason do you need this installed for?

In your chroot environment it is likely that dpkg is not using i386. This command will resolve that:
# dpkg --add-architecture i386 && apt-get update

This is not a bug in apt.

 status invalid

@ Wubi maintainers

Please triage this issue. It seems the installed system did not have i386 configured as foreign architecture which a regular 12.10 install would have.

[I am not also assigning to debootstrap which has the same issue as this is unsupported. See bug #971761, comment #37.]

Investigating the wubi disk image, ubuntu-12.10-wubi-amd64.tar, the file /var/lib/dpkg/arch does not exist. So something needs to add i386 as an architecture.

11:15 < infinity> Oh, hrm. That could be because the dpkg postinst only adds i386 as an arch on fresh installs, but dpkg is never a fresh install.
11:15 < infinity> (Since debootstrap unpacks it without running postinsts, then reinstalls it, IIRC)
11:15 < infinity> We paper over that in both d-i and ubiquity by explicitly adding the arch, I believe.
11:17 < infinity> Assuming my theory about debootstrap is right, I can't think of a sane way to fix that other than having wubi also do the requisite papering over.
11:17 < cjwatson> ah, yeah, or have live-build do it
11:17 < infinity> Or live-build, sure.
11:17 < infinity> live-build probably makes more sense.
11:17 < cjwatson> makes the livefs bigger due to the extra Packages files
11:17 < infinity> Though, if...
11:17 < cjwatson> so probably better not do it across the board
11:17 < infinity> Was just going to say that.
11:17 < cjwatson> maybe do it in livecd-rootfs just for wubi?
11:18 < infinity> Could do it as the step right after the final apt-get update.
11:19 < cjwatson> infinity: right before ...
11:19 < cjwatson> infinity: we don't want to do it after for wubi, because then people don't have i386 indexes until they update
11:19 < cjwatson> wubi is a special case here due to the ghost-y nature of its installation

> Oh, hrm. That could be because the dpkg postinst only adds i386 as an arch on fresh installs, but dpkg is never a fresh install.
> (Since debootstrap unpacks it without running postinsts, then reinstalls it, IIRC)

What dpkg actually does is extract the contents of the packages, then call dpkg --unpack, and finally call dpkg --configure. So the maintainer scripts should be run with all the normal arguments.

I can confirm this issue. I have seen multiple Wubi installations in my supporter forum ubuntuusers.de where this issue occurs.