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openSUSE Leap Documentation › Reference › System › 32-Bit and 64-Bit Applications in a 64-Bit System Environment
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Reference
  1. About This Guide
  2. I Advanced Administration
    1. 1 YaST in Text Mode
    2. 2 Managing Software with Command Line Tools
    3. 3 System Recovery and Snapshot Management with Snapper
    4. 4 Remote Graphical Sessions with VNC
    5. 5 Expert Partitioner
    6. 6 Installing Multiple Kernel Versions
    7. 7 Graphical User Interface
  3. II System
    1. 8 32-Bit and 64-Bit Applications in a 64-Bit System Environment
    2. 9 Introduction to the Boot Process
    3. 10 The systemd Daemon
    4. 11 journalctl: Query the systemd Journal
    5. 12 The Boot Loader GRUB 2
    6. 13 Basic Networking
    7. 14 UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface)
    8. 15 Special System Features
    9. 16 Dynamic Kernel Device Management with udev
  4. III Services
    1. 17 SLP
    2. 18 Time Synchronization with NTP
    3. 19 The Domain Name System
    4. 20 DHCP
    5. 21 Samba
    6. 22 Sharing File Systems with NFS
    7. 23 On-Demand Mounting with Autofs
    8. 24 The Apache HTTP Server
    9. 25 Setting Up an FTP Server with YaST
    10. 26 Squid Caching Proxy Server
  5. IV Mobile Computers
    1. 27 Mobile Computing with Linux
    2. 28 Using NetworkManager
    3. 29 Power Management
  6. A An Example Network
  7. B GNU Licenses
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Applies to openSUSE Leap 15.1

8 32-Bit and 64-Bit Applications in a 64-Bit System Environment Edit source

8.1 Runtime Support
8.2 Kernel Specifications

openSUSE® Leap is available for 64-bit platforms. The developers have not ported all 32-bit applications to 64-bit systems. But openSUSE Leap supports 32-bit application use in 64-bit system environments. This chapter offers a brief overview of 32-bit support implementation on 64-bit openSUSE Leap platforms.

openSUSE Leap for the 64-bit platforms AMD64 and Intel 64 is designed so that existing 32-bit applications run in the 64-bit environment “out-of-the-box.” This support means that you can continue to use your preferred 32-bit applications without waiting for a corresponding 64-bit port to become available.

Note
Note: No Support for Building 32-bit Applications

openSUSE Leap does not support compilation of 32-bit applications. It only offers runtime support for 32-bit binaries.

8.1 Runtime Support Edit source

Important
Important: Conflicts Between Application Versions

If an application is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit environments, installing both versions may cause problems. In such cases, decide on one version to install to avoid potential runtime errors.

An exception to this rule is PAM (pluggable authentication modules). openSUSE Leap uses PAM in the authentication process as a layer that mediates between user and application. Always install both PAM versions on 64-bit operating systems that also run 32-bit applications.

For correct execution, every application requires a range of libraries. Unfortunately, the names are identical for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of these libraries. They must be differentiated from each other in another way.

To retain compatibility with 32-bit versions, 64-bit and 32-bit libraries are stored in the same location. The 32-bit version of libc.so.6 is located under /lib/libc.so.6 in both 32-bit and 64-bit environments.

All 64-bit libraries and object files are located in directories called lib64. The 64-bit object files normally found under /lib and /usr/lib are now found under /lib64 and /usr/lib64. This means that space is available for 32-bit libraries under /lib and /usr/lib, so the file name for both versions can remain unchanged.

If the data content of 32-bit subdirectories under /lib does not depend on word size, they are not moved. This scheme conforms to LSB (Linux Standards Base) and FHS (File System Hierarchy Standard).

8.2 Kernel Specifications Edit source

The 64-bit kernels for AMD64/Intel 64 offer both a 64-bit and a 32-bit kernel ABI (application binary interface). The latter is identical to the ABI for the corresponding 32-bit kernel. This means that communication between both 32-bit and 64-bit applications with 64-bit kernels are identical.

The 32-bit system call emulation for 64-bit kernels does not support all the APIs used by system programs. This depends on the platform. For this reason, few applications, like lspci, must be compiled.

A 64-bit kernel can only load 64-bit kernel modules. You must compile 64-bit modules specifically for 64-bit kernels. It is not possible to use 32-bit kernel modules with 64-bit kernels.

Tip
Tip: Kernel-loadable Modules

Some applications require separate kernel-loadable modules. If you intend to use a 32-bit application in a 64-bit system environment, contact the provider of the application and SUSE. Make sure that the 64-bit version of the kernel-loadable module and the 32-bit compiled version of the kernel API are available for this module.

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