alien cannot built package for architecture "ubuntu amd64"

I'm using ubuntu i686.
Need to install i386 .rpm packages.
tried this code:

alien -i [file.i386.rpm]

Tried to install ia32-libs...

apt-get install ia32-libs

...and tried alien again but didn't work.

any suggestion? thx.

[EDIT]
[suggestion #1: run alien with sudo -c -v ...]
your suggestion didn't work. Same error reported:

file.i386.rpm is for architecture i386 ; the package cannot be built on this system.

The line above the error is the command chmod:

chmod 755 ["name of directory"/debian/rules]

any other suggestion? thx.

4 Answers

As found on , this is a nice easy workaround - after converting to TGZ as an intermediate stage, just convert again to the .deb:

sudo alien --scripts --to-tgz <package.rpm>
sudo alien --scripts --to-deb <package.tgz>

The --to-deb is a default, used here only to be explicit about the conversions.

I had the same problem and solved it this way:

alien --to-tgz --scripts file.i386.rpm
mkdir unpack
cd unpack
tar -xpzf ../file.tgz
mv install ..
cp -rv * /
cd ../install
./doinst.sh

The RPM is converted to a TGZ file. Be aware that the ".386" is not in the name of the TGZ file.

Run alien with sudo and -c -v parameters:

sudo alien -i -c -v file.i386.rpm

The -c (--scripts) parameter Include scripts in package

The -v (--verbose) parameter Display each command alien runs so you can see what is going wrong.

8086 = 8-bit

80186 = 8-bit

80286 = 16-bit

80386 = 32-bit

80486 = 32-bit

80586 = 32-bit = Pentium, Pentium MMX, K5, K6, K6-II, K6-III

80686 = 32-bit = Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Athlon, Athlon XP, Opteron*, Athlon FX-51*, Athlon FX-53*, Athlon 64*

80786 = 32-bit = Pentium 4

If you have compiled a program for 386 architectures, only the processors equal to it or above it can execute it.

So the i386.rpm cannot run to your ubuntu i686