The default behavior of yum when doing an install on a biarch system is to install both packages (the main arch and the compatibility arch), e.g. running 'yum install libfoo' will install both: libfoo.i386 libfoo.x86_64 This is annoying and contrary to, e.g. the way the Red Hat installer works. You can override it when installing a single package by explicitly asking for the architecture: yum install libfoo.x86_64 instead of yum install libfoo but there is no way to avoid it, for instance, when doing 'yum groupinstall' from a repo with a standard Red Hat comps.xml file. Here is a patch which adds a new config option 'nomultilibinstall' which can disable this: http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~wingc/patches/yum/yum-2.2.2-nomulti.patch This doesn't affect upgrades; when 2 arches of the same package are installed, both will be upgraded as usual. It also doesn't prevent a i386 package from being installed, for instance, if no x86_64 package by that name exists. It also doesn't change dependency resolution, so if the i386 package is actually required by something else, it will still be installed. -Chris Wing wingc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
