Firefox 32bit on x86_64 Fedora

by jon — last modified May 30, 2010 04:44 PM

Sometimes there is a need to run firefox in 32bit mode. This howto explains how to do so.

Applicable to Fedora Versions

Fedora 11
Fedora 12
Fedora 13

Requirements

To be able to run firefox 32bit, you must configure 32bit repos as the 32bit firefox builds have been removed from the x86_64 repos.

Fedora running x86_64.

Doing the Work

Configuration of the repos and installation is a breeze.

Configure 32bit Yum repos and only pull in firefox:

cat <<EOREPOS> /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-32.repo
[fedora-32]
name=Fedora $releasever - i386
failovermethod=priority
#baseurl=http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/$releasever/Everything/i386/os/
mirrorlist=https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=fedora-$releasever&arch=i386
enabled=1
metadata_expire=7d
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-i386
includepkgs=firefox


[updates-32]
name=Fedora $releasever - i386 - Updates
failovermethod=priority
#baseurl=http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/updates/$releasever/i386/
mirrorlist=https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=updates-released-f$releasever&arch=i386
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-i386
includepkgs=firefox
EOREPOS

Install firefox:

su -c 'yum install firefox.i686 libcanberra-gtk2.i686 gtk2-engines.i686'

Run firefox in 32bit mode:

setarch i386 firefox

Troubleshooting

How to test

Check to make sure firefox correctly started in 32bit mode:

Browse to the about page by putting the following into your address bar:
```
about:
```
You should see i686 not x86_64.

More Information

Disclaimer

We test this stuff on our own machines, really we do. But you may run into problems, if you do, come to #fedora on irc.freenode.net

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