On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 7:08 AM, Joel Roth <joelz@???> wrote:
> I installed devuan following dev1fanboy's guide and ended up with an amd64 kernel and i386 package binaries.
>
> First of all, I'm curious if those choices are explicit in the installer.
> (I thought had I asked for amd64.)

Nope! The 64 bit installer should, in principle, install a pure 64 bit system
(There's a dedicated preseed option or you could add-architecture with
the generic postinstall command one:
I've tried it once and the result was a disaster)

Apt doesn't help by aggressively installing different architecture
packages if given the chance, so if you were to blacklist something in
/etc/apt/preferences you would have to do that again!

> My main question is this. Now I want to compile some
> software that requires amd64. I've already added the
> architecture using 'dpkg --add-architecture amd64'
> and then apt-get update.
>
> When I tried this 'apt-get install gcc:amd64' I got this
> error:
>

> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>  gcc:amd64 : Depends: cpp:amd64 (>= 4:4.9.2-2) but it is not going to be installed
>              Depends: gcc-4.9:amd64 (>= 4.9.2-1~) but it is not going to be installed
> E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

>
> Is it possible to somehow convert the entire toolchain (or even
> installation) to amd64, or do I need to go back to the installer?

Debian claims the default architecture is the one of the "dpkg"
package you're using,
but honestly I would think reinstalling is probably faster!

> I'll piggyback another installation question: how do people port their /etc when starting from a pristine installation?
> I used to just overwrite everything in the new /etc with the old, then fix what ever would break.

I manually backup (with cp or Thunar) the 3-6 files I changed! :)

> ### WARNING!! Additional settings for this service may be found in /etc/default/someprogram.

The "real problem", IMHO, is not /etc/default (in fact I would prefer
each program having a single settings file there instead of it being
in the root of /etc, in a directory named after the program, in one
named after what the program does)... but the fact that each distro
è[family] has its own name for "default"!