Arch Linux

wmard15

Member

Registered: 2017-06-09

Posts: 8

[SOLVED] Force Boot a dual arch iso in 32-bit mode on 64 bit PC ?

Good day! I have a certain software which could be compiled only at 32 bit Linux OS,
so I downloaded archlinux-2017.03.01-dual.iso - the last Arch Linux ISO which was dual.

Please tell: how to force booting it in 32-bit mode so that I could install a 32 bit Arch system?

Last edited by wmard15 (2017-06-10 08:53:24)

fsckd

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-06-15

Posts: 4,173

Re: [SOLVED] Force Boot a dual arch iso in 32-bit mode on 64 bit PC ?

Hello and welcome to the forums. Arch Linux 64bit can compile and run 32bit applications using packages from the multilib repository. I would suggest you try that if your CPU is 64bit instead of using an unsupported and deprecated architecture.

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wmard15

Member

Registered: 2017-06-09

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Force Boot a dual arch iso in 32-bit mode on 64 bit PC ?

Hello and welcome to the forums. Arch Linux 64bit can compile and run 32bit applications using packages from the multilib repository. I would suggest you try that if your CPU is 64bit instead of using an unsupported and deprecated architecture.

Thank you for this advice, but it is hardly doable in my situation because it looks like I will have to rewrite a lot of complex assembly/build scripts for this... Also, the computer ("build server") in question - has just 4 GB of RAM so there will not be much benefit from 64 bit until 2018 year - when the packages for 32 bit Arch will stop updating

Looks like I found a solution: surprisingly, despite "-dual.iso" at the end of filename,
"archlinux-2017.03.01-dual.iso" is not dual - it only has x86_64 architecture inside!
This filename was very misleading and I spent like several hours trying to figure out

After downloading a slightly older "archlinux-2017.02.01-dual.iso" - which is twice bigger in size - I could see i686 boot option right at the main boot menu! No need to edit grub configs or anything, it is already available and works find. uname -m = i686

P.S. for those who are in similar situation - "archlinux-2017.02.01-dual.iso" is rapidly disappearing from the internet, but there are still a few places where you could get it. Wouldn't list the links here though, because some people might want to get them removed as well

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

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Re: [SOLVED] Force Boot a dual arch iso in 32-bit mode on 64 bit PC ?

Please remember to mark your thread as [Solved] by editing your first post and prepending it to the title.

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wmard15

Member

Registered: 2017-06-09

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Force Boot a dual arch iso in 32-bit mode on 64 bit PC ?

Please remember to mark your thread as [Solved] by editing your first post and prepending it to the title.

OK done