Package: apt Followup-For: Bug #451369 Control: merge 451369 670668 The problem concerns an installed package whose architecture is not in APT::Architectures: - the package is not displayed in apt frontends, it's status can not be inspected, neither can it be removed (by the casual user); and - other packages may become dpkg uninstallable due to conflicts, multi-arch version lockstep issues, etc. which apt does not know about, can not fix, and tries to install the uninstallable packages anyway (results in dpkg errors).
The very purpose of APT::Architectures is to inform apt (not dpkg) which architectures to consider. Arguably, that makes this not a bug but an unsupportable configuration. The previous suggestion from Goswin von Brederlow seems ok: > the problem in 451369 is that packages that are neither APT::Architecture > not "all" are simply ignored when parsing index files. When parsing > Packages files this might be a good idea to allow for multi-architecture > Packages files. When parsing /var/lib/dpkg/status it seems wrong. With that solution, at least apt remains aware of all packages which dpkg is aware of, preventing problems with installed packages (and being able to handle issues with partial installs such as [1]). I can not say whether that is a good solution or not. If not, then this report should be closed or +wontfix. [1] http://bugs.debian.org/670900 * Work-around with *proper* usage of multi-arch Follow the multi-arch usage instructions [2], adding all foreign architectures to dpkg. APT::Architectures must contain an entry for every architecture of an installed package; it is best to leave this unset since the default is ok. $ dpkg --print-architecture amd64 $ dpkg --print-foreign-architectures i386 $ apt-config dump | grep -i ^APT::Architectures:: APT::Architectures:: "amd64"; APT::Architectures:: "i386"; Configure your sources.list using the arch-qualified syntax (β[arch=amd64]β). If you want apt to download package lists for amd64, but not i386, your sources.list might be similar to this: deb [arch=amd64] http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main deb [arch=amd64] http://mirror.waia.asn.au/debian/ wheezy main deb-src http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main Any βdebβ line which is not arch-qualified will fetch lists for all APT::Architectures. Users of stable can use this to receive security updates: deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main [2] http://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/HOWTO#Usage -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org