Dpkg error cannot remove architecture i386 currently in use by the database

For those who want to disable multiarch support from the get-go, here’s a one liner that can be used in (init) scripts…

[ ! $(dpkg --get-selections | grep -q i386) ] && dpkg --remove-architecture i386

This would remove i386 architechture as expected on the first run. On consecutive runs, it’d show the following warning…

dpkg: warning: cannot remove non-foreign architecture ‘i386’

This one-liner could be useful in most cloud servers where there are no i386 packages are installed (by default). While this is a Ubuntu forum, here is some detailed info on multiarch from Debian… https://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/HOWTO .

Other answers recommended dpkg -l to get the list of packages and then grep the result. In my experience, dpkg -l has failed to show some packages (with i386 arch), but dpkg --get-selections showed them clearly marking them as package_name:i386. So, if we want to remove i386 packages previous installed, then to remove them, here’s actual command that works…

apt-get remove --purge `dpkg --get-selections | awk '/i386/{print $1}'`

deb [arch=amd64,i386] http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free

3 ноября 2012 г.

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Enable i386 arch

To install 32bit packages on 64 bit systems (e.g. Google earth and Skype, which are not provided in 64 bit versions for Linux), you will need to allow 32 bit packages to be installed on your 64 bit system — and with Debian this is called «multiarch».

From 7.0, Debian supports simultaneous running of i386 and amd64 binaries.

Note: after enabling another architecture, you may have to specify from then on which arch to retrieve and install packages from, like this

apt install -a amd64

or set the preference for your architecture with editing the apt.conf file

and add a line like this

save it and apt install will retrieve from amd64 packages

If at any time you need to be done with i386 (or any other arch), use this command:

But you will need to remove all the packages installed from that arch first, if that’s possible, or really wanted.

Trying to remove an arch while still having packages installed from it, will return an error like this one:

«dpkg: error: cannot remove architecture ‘i386’ currently in use by the database»

To find out what packages are installed from an arch, run

And remove them with,

Google Earth

Downlaod from earth/download/…

cd to Downloads and install G-earth

for i386, a dependency lsb-core is needed, for amd64 platform the package install ends with errors:

googleearth depends on libfreeimage3 … lsb-core … ia32-libs-gtk

Sort it out with:

The following NEW packages will be installed:
<a huge heap of i386 packages>
Need to get 56.9 MB of archives. After this operation, 171 MB of additional disk space will be used
Enter y

In Debian Jessie, ia32-libs does not exist, and Google earth still depends on it (they say this has changed in sid), so if you hit this problem you can install a dummy i32-libs package from here http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=111898

Skype

Requires multiarch enabled (see top).

Download skype from their page and install it

(a fair few i386 packages will be installed)

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