What's the deal with 32 bit and chroot?

Question

I've read all over the place about chroot and 32 bit libraries or something, and I'm wondering if that's something that would be helpful for 64 bit systems for 32 bit compatibility.
I guess I just want to know what that is.
Last edited by z.s.tar.gz (2009-09-05 11:30:55)

Answer 1

Basically, 64-bit can run 32-bit executables (the reverse doesn't work, however). The problem is, all non-trivial executables have to reference libraries, and libraries differ between 64-bit and 32-bit. Some distros, like Ubuntu, use a multilib system, where there's two sets of libraries. Some apps behave better with this sort of setup than others.
A chroot is basically a 'virtual root'. You'd probably know that in linux everything is done relative to a root filesystem. So, for example, an app who wants libraries will default to searching in /lib or /usr/lib. In a chroot, you'd define a folder in your filesystem (/opt/arch32 for example) to be the root of the install. Meaning that all the executables run inside that chroot (via schroot or whatever) will see /opt/arch32/lib as /lib. That way, all apps will run as if they were natively running on 32-bit, no need for a multilib system.