Mageia 7 - Steam fails to install [SOLVED]

[mla]

ON a freshly installed Mageia 7, the Mageia Steam RPM package fails to install ("urpmi steam"), claiming unsatisfied dependencies. The reason is that by default media sources now exclude 32-bit software. Steam (yes, the 64 bit version!) needs some 32 bit libraries. Enabling 32-bit media sources (both core and nonfree) solves the problem.

[doktor5000]

Well, that's not new to mga7, that has always been the case, same as with e.g. wine.

[ITA84]

Regardless of how long it's been that way, I guess it's a bit counter-intuitive to have packages you can't install (unless there's some informative message about where to find the dependencies, can't check myself); maybe it should be documented somewhere, in a pinned post or in the wiki

[doktor5000]

maybe it should be documented somewhere, in a pinned post or in the wiki

Feel free to document it somewhere if you deem it necessary, everybody can create a wiki page and everybody can write a forum post.

[ITA84]

I'd have to try out the installer first to see how it works and why it might create an issue; maybe I'll try later on. I just wanted to mention that Distrowatch seems to have had a similar issue with Steam during the review installation of Mageia 7, so it could be a relevant issue

[mla]

Doktor5000 wrote:
Well, that's not new to mga7, that has always been the case, same as with e.g. wine.

I am sure that's right. But despite using Mageia from its start (by *far* my favourite distro, BTW, and I have tried a few!), I've been quite unaware of this quirk. I installed Steam first under Mageia 6 and that was trouble-free -- perhaps I'd already added 32 bit media for some other reason, e.g. wine. So this time, whin I tried to urpmi a bunch of my extra packages, which includes stem, this issue came as a surprise. Trouble is, all you get told is that installation cannot proceed due to such and such unsatisfied dependency, with no indication that anything to do with 32 bit stuff is involved.

So, anticipating Doktor's kind suggestion, I thought I'd make a note of this issue in the Forum.

[doktor5000]

I'm still unclear how you end up with 32bit repos being disabled, AFAIR at least i586 core_release and core_updates are enabled by default and should suffice for this?
Also see the hint in the last line at https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_7_Rel ... positories

edit doktor5000: Just tested a default x86_64 install, and 32bit repos are configured but not enabled, so compared to release notes I'd say this is a bug.
Also when removing all repositories and adding a new set using drakrpm-edit-media, 32bit repos are core_release and core_updates are also NOT enabled by default, so this seems to be a bug.

[ITA84]

For my system, when I used the MCC to replace all Cauldron repos with Mageia 7 Official repos (deleted all then selected Add), all the 32-bit repos were left unselected, including core. Of course that could just be a specific behaviour on my unusual system, coming from Cauldron, so I'll wait till I get to try the installer to see if it also happens normally during installation (and I'll open a bug report if necessary). Thanks

[doktor5000]

edit doktor5000: Just tested a default x86_64 install, and 32bit repos are configured but not enabled, so compared to release notes I'd say this is a bug.
Also when removing all repositories and adding a new set using drakrpm-edit-media, 32bit repos core_release and core_updates are also NOT enabled by default, so this seems to be a bug.

[doktor5000]

This is not a bug, this is intentional, see https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24376#c1
I've slightly adjusted release notes according to that.

[mla]

So it is a new behaviour, after all. Well, the policy has the consequence of there being at least one package (Steam) which is offered on a default Mageia 7 instance as installable when in fact it is not. As I said, the real problem is that the installation failure gives no hint of 32 bits stuff being involved.