32 bit updates?

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1

Ubuntu Support Template

Ubuntu Version:
Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS

Desktop Environment (if applicable):
none

Problem Description:
Just curious if the 32 bit repositories are being updated. I have one 32 bit machine that doesn’t seem to get updates nearly as often as the 64 bit servers.

Relevant System Information:
Celeron 32 bit

Runs DHCP service and that is all. Only handles about 400 calls a day, so no reason to upgrade the hardware.

Screenshots or Error Messages

none
What I’ve Tried:
Changing the mirrors.

2

Your details are unclear to me.

The only 32-bit architecture fully supported by Ubuntu is ARMHF, but you mention celeron 32-bit which implies x86 to me (ie. intel)

The i386 architecture is a secondary architecture only; which means most updates for machines which are amd64, but have i386 as a secondary architecture for a limited packageset; amd64 updates for the majority of key packages (the actual architecture of the machine is 64-bit amd64).

https://documentation.ubuntu.com/project/how-ubuntu-is-made/concepts/supported-architectures/

You’ll note it says

i386 is a partial-port of Ubuntu, which is supported as a multi-arch supplementary architecture.

1 Like
3

I don’t think Debian supports 32bit either. Other distributions support 32bit, Like Puppy

https://forum.puppylinux.com/puppy-linux-collection

Just found this which looks mildly interesting

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/introducing-loss32-new-lightweight-linux-distro-focus-legacy-hardware

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4

Well, this is interesting, because the #uname -a

Linux ossan 6.8.0-83-generic #83-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Sep 5 21:46:54 UTC 2025 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux

But #inxi shows this:

System:

Kernel: 6.8.0-83-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.3.0

Console: pty pts/0 Distro: Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS (Noble Numbat)

Machine:

Type: Other-vm? System: Supermicro product: PDSMi v: 0123456789 serial:

Mobo: Supermicro model: PDSMi+ v: PCB Version serial: BIOS: Phoenix

**v:** 6.00 **date:** 03/05/2008

CPU:

Info: single core model: Intel Celeron 430 bits: 64 arch: Core2 Merom rev: 1 cache: L1: 64 KiB

**L2:** 512 KiB

Speed (MHz): 1795 min/max: N/A core: 1: 1795 bogomips: 3590

Flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 ssse3

So where does uname get its information?

I really didn’t dig deeper that using uname. I just noticed that machine stopped getting updates.

5

There are no i386 kernel builds for noble or Ubuntu 24.04

guiverc@d7050-next:/de2900/lubuntu_64$   rmadison linux-generic linux-image-generic-hwe-24.04-edge linux-image-generic-hwe-24.04 |grep noble
 linux-generic                      | 6.8.0-31.31            | noble             | amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x
 linux-generic                      | 6.8.0-31.31.1          | noble             | riscv64
 linux-generic                      | 6.8.0-94.96            | noble-security    | amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x
 linux-generic                      | 6.8.0-100.100          | noble-proposed    | amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x
 linux-generic                      | 6.8.0-100.100          | noble-updates     | amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x
 linux-generic                      | 6.14.0-37.37.1~24.04.1 | noble-security    | riscv64
 linux-generic                      | 6.17.0-14.14.1~24.04.1 | noble-proposed    | riscv64
 linux-generic                      | 6.17.0-14.14.1~24.04.1 | noble-updates     | riscv64
 linux-image-generic-hwe-24.04-edge | 6.8.0-31.31            | noble             | amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x
 linux-image-generic-hwe-24.04-edge | 6.14.0-37.37~24.04.1   | noble-security    | amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x
 linux-image-generic-hwe-24.04-edge | 6.17.0-14.14~24.04.1   | noble-proposed    | amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x
 linux-image-generic-hwe-24.04-edge | 6.17.0-14.14~24.04.1   | noble-updates     | amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x
 linux-image-generic-hwe-24.04      | 6.8.0-31.31            | noble             | amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x
 linux-image-generic-hwe-24.04      | 6.14.0-37.37~24.04.1   | noble-security    | amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x
 linux-image-generic-hwe-24.04      | 6.17.0-14.14~24.04.1   | noble-proposed    | amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x
 linux-image-generic-hwe-24.04      | 6.17.0-14.14~24.04.1   | noble-updates     | amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x

at least I don’t see any i386 for any line there. Not receiving any updates makes sense to me if architecture is i386.

I’d explore where your kernel came from; apt policy linux-generic for example, BUT givem it may have come from a 3rd party, or be manually installed, it’s package name could be something different. Either way I don’t know why you’re getting i386 result from uname unless you installed 3rd party packages. I’d also sudo apt update and ensure all details are as expected, nothing strange and no missing lines. What you’d done to your system I don’t know sorry.

6

Thanks, might give me an excuse to move the service (DHCP) to another machine and re-do that one from scratch. I wasn’t the one that originally set it up, so I’m not sure how it was built. It has a bunch of stuff installed that isn’t needed on that machine as well.

7

That’s easy enough to demonstrate

$ uname -a
Linux Karloff 6.14.0-37-generic #37~24.04.1-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Nov 20 10:25:38 UTC 2 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ linux32 bash
$ uname -a
Linux Karloff 6.14.0-37-generic #37~24.04.1-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Nov 20 10:25:38 UTC 2 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux

More fun.

$ linux32 –uname-2.6 bash
$ uname -a
Linux Karloff 2.6.74-37-generic #37~24.04.1-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Nov 20 10:25:38 UTC 2 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux
1 Like
8

Others have already covered most of this topic, but I’d like to point out that your uname output is really not as relevant as you think (a 64bit kernel can easily run 32bit binaries, this only depends on user space), to actually see what package architecture you use you can run dpkg --print-architecture which will either return i386 (32bit) or amd64 (64bit) …

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