Yum, PHP and Xen running 32bits on a 64bit machine.

My host Xen server is an AMD 64bi machine. The little Xen VMs are based on CentOS 4.4 32bit, which I plan to keep it as such to allow easy migration. However it comes with abit of risk.

I managed to run 'yum install httpd mysql mysql-server' without any problems. But when I needed to install PHP, typing in 'yum install php' would result in a horrific set of errors which look like this:

Error: Missing Dependency: libgssapi_krb5.so.2()(64bit) is needed by package openssl
Error: Missing Dependency: libdl.so.2()(64bit) is needed by package openssl
etc...

which indicates that yum has detected the 64bit nature of the host arch, as 'uname' gives it away.

So how do I force yum to install only i386 binaries? Simple, RTFM! 'man yum' ... somewhere in the middle of the documentation, it states:

Specifying package names
A package can be referred to for install,update,list,remove etc with any of the following:

name
name.arch
name-ver
name-ver-rel
name-ver-rel.arch
name-epoch:ver-rel.arch
epoch:name-ver-rel.arch

For example: yum remove kernel-2.4.1-10.i686

So to get php to install nicely, just type:

yum install php.i386

and it works!

[Update: 5 minutes later.
It kinda worked. there was a problem at the end of the installation. Yum complained that 'package php-pear-4.3.9-3.22 is intended for a x86_64 architecture'. So "no problem," I thought, "I just apply what I learnt to php-pear by using 'yum install php-pear.i386'"
No. yum resolved that php needed more stuff like openssl, and decided to look for the 64 bit installation. I tried my luck and did this:

yum install php-pear.i386 php.i386

on the reasoning that I should also force yum to install only i386 archs for these two items. Surprisingly, it kept all the dependencies to i386, and it resolved it well.

So NOW it works.]

yk.