Hi,

I just finished set up my new Debian amd64 and I am about to set up a chroot. But before starting I would like to have some info about it.

1/ Will the x86 apps inside the chroot be able to call apps in the 64bits OS. ex: if I click on an email address in Firefox (x86) can it open a Kmail window (amd64)?

2/ Are the fonts of the 64 bits OS available to apps within the chroot or do I need to have a separate set of fonts within the chroot?

3/ I am using kde and if I install firefox inside the chroot will I have to reinstall gtk-qt-engine or my present configuration will affect apps within the chroot?

4/ Is there any negative performance impact in using a chroot? ex: will firefox be as responsive inside the chroot than it is outside?

5/ Is it easy to remove a chroot? The idea would be to use it for now and get rid of it once the apps I need exist in 64bits...

6/ Also I would be interested in knowing any problems you might have encountered in using a chroot... thanks :-)

7/ Also I saw that usually people install a chroot in /var... I'm sure this is a very sensible thing to do but I was wondering what was the reason for this, I would have though that for a small number of apps like mine I could just put it in my /home.

In brief, the 32bits apps I need are fairly limited but not having them is kind of annoying. There are mplayer with w32codecs, skype, flash, and maybe acrobat. Actually among those I mostly want flash (yea the add-plugin but it's everywhere now :-( ) and skype, w32codecs I'm not really sure... my use of mplayer is kind of limited to real streams, quicktime stuff and maybe couple windows media files (rare I guess), do you know if I really *need* w32codecs for these cases?

Well also I heard about other methods besides the chroot but I have to admit that I don't know much about them so if you have an opinion about nspluginwrapper and gnash (does it finally work in youtube by the way?) for instance I would be interested :-)

In brief, I just want something clean, stable, integrated, upgradeable and without --force-arch type of thing ;-)

Thanks in advance for your help!

A.

I don't know enough about chroots to answer your questions, but they do interest me. I recently encountered this discussion about creating them using a tool called schroot. The author is Debian Developer, Nico Golde. You may find it helpful.

I use Gnash, and for the first time today, I watched a YouTube video that worked. The developer says a new release is imminent, and that it does work on YouTube videos.

Thanks a lot for the link, this seems indeed very interesting and went right into my bookmarks :-)
But can I ask?... I see that you use Debian amd64, did you solve these problems in a different (better?) way (flash...)?
Thanks
A.

That sound really great :-) does it seem reasonably stable?... well I don't need that stable for a flash plugin though... are you talking about the version in unstable? I would really prefer using gnash than the adobe thing :-)
A.

I added some to the above post. I can live without full video support, but I do have a 32-bit installation as well, in case I really have to see something. Gnash is getting better and better, tho. Also, it's worth noting that Konqueror does not need a plugin for Java applets, so again, it's an easy solution if I really need to see one.

My Gnash comes from Unstable, and on the video I watched today, both sound and video were jerky, but understandable, but as I said above, a significant upgrade is very close.

Here's the blog of Miriam Ruiz, DD for Gnash. Look at the entries for April 26 & May 2.

Thanks... This makes me want to finally dump adobe flash and use gnash :-) just too bad that it be without FFmpeg... (apparently). I'm looking forward to try out this new release :-)
A.

For flash you can use the nspluginwrapper package install it and the 32bit libs packages it recommends. Download then extract the files in downloadable tarball from the Adobe site put the .so and .xpt in the /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ directory now run nspluginwrapper -i /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so to install then you should have working flash in firefox/iceweasel and if you scan for plugins in Konqueror it should be there as well. For java put non-free on the line for your Debian sources then install the
sun-java5-jre, sun-java5-bin and sun-java5-fonts packages now in Konqueror you need to enable the use KIO in the Java section of its configuration settings. For the w32codecs you do not need them if you add this line to your sources.list.

Then install the versions of mplayer, ffmpeg ... that you get there they are built with the extra codecs that are not enabled in Debian due to BS laws in some countries. While you are it you might as well install the VLC package as well for those times that the other media players fail to play the file it seems to work for just about anything.

Edit: Just remembered you would need the latest version of Konqueror IIRC for flash to work in it as the change was just made to enable using it with the nsplugin method.

Thanks HappyTux,
Concerning nspluginwrapper, is it stable enough? I assume that this type of method include a lot of overhead... is it the case?
I already have the debian multimedia repo of course but yes I will add VLC... might help sometime :-)
Besides that what do you think of using a chroot? It is still more flexible in terms of upgrade etc... any idea on that?
I come back to the chroot as it clearly remains the "debian recommended way" and I wanted to make sure it was necessary as AMD64 is getting more mainstream everyday :-)
Thanks,
A.

It uses about 10 to 15% of one of my processors running at 2.5ghz when playing back a flash video so depending on the speed/type of your processor it could use more.
Could not really tell you much about the chroot never used it, always seems more trouble that it was worth to me... I do not think is totally necessary now as I have no real problems playing the vast majority of the files out there in fact I can not remember when the last time was that something would not play.

mmm That seems very reasonable to me... thanks

Also... Does anyone have info about chroot?... even if I don't set it up I would be quite interested in knowing more about it...
Thanks,
A.

I use a chroot.

This is a good guide to get started with http://alioth.debian.org/docman/view....html#id292281

It has been updated with schroot instructions as well.

For your (many) questions (quick answer - it is (more or less)- its own OS)

1) No
2) No, they need there own fonts
3) Yes
4) This is the surprising part. I do not not any (noticeable) performance hit. And that includes back when OO had to be installed in it since no 64 port was available.
5) Very easy. Just remove the fstab edits and comment out the schroot.conf file.
6) I am sure I had some, but can't think of any. It is pretty easy now.
7) I actually install mine in /usr/local (which is on its own partition.)

Hi JackieBrown,
Thanks a lot for your input it's very helpful :-)
Still I'm little disappointed by the fact apps within the chroot cannot call apps outside (the example of firefox and Kmail is trivial but I find it nicer that it opens directly a mail windows...) Is there really no way around that?
Besides that... I would be interested in knowing why you chose the chroot option above other possible options (nspluginwrapper, or ia32-libs way for instance...), I admit that it makes the system more easily upgradeable and the installation cleaner but are there any other motivations?
Thanks again for your help,
A.

Th inability to call outside apps is annoying but when you think about it, it makes sense. It is it's own OS and the only folders/partitions that it has access to in your "main OS" is what you bind it to in your fstab.

As far as using a chroot vs the ia32-libs, it really depend on what programs you are are installing. I have the ia32-libs installed for gaming and tried using that as my main solution for a while. After some time passes you will start getting errors about missing dependencies from 32 bit apps and you will be hunting 32 bit debs, extracting them, and moving the lib files over to your /lib32 (try remembering to update those and which are the ones you added.)

Nspluginwrapper I never had much luck with getting java working and wanted more than java and flash anyways (read mplayer.) And Firefox was not my only reason for installing the chroot.

To be honest, if all you want is flash, grab the 64 bit version of swiftfox (http://www.getswiftfox.com/debian.htm)
This is a 64 bit deb but really a 32 bit firefox. Go to any web page that has flash and firefox will auto-install it for you. (You still need the ia32-libs)