At 09:39 AM 7/02/2005 +1100, you wrote:

>I've had this problem before and I've seen others report the same issue but
>still the RPM does not install on a pentium.
>The rpm is named i686 but on all my old boxes being converted to Linux, the
>package fails to install complaining of wrong architecture. Why?

CPU chip architecture. This is not a simple topic, but this article might
help to understand it:
http://www.cyberwalker.net/columns/jun96/060696.html

>If I run the install script it's OK.

That's fine - it means that the Linux kernel and C/C++ runtimes installed
on your machine are OK for that build of Firebird.

>What test of architecture is there? is it just the file name doing this? Or
>something else?
>[Fedora Core 2, RH9 has the same result]

RPMs are built according to the lowest estimated chip architecture (or
nominal equivalent, for non-Intel) that the rpm builder software determines
is compatible with the linux kernel of the system that builds
them. There's more to it than just the file name of the rpm. Those with
older CPUs do suffer a bit here from having our rpms built on bleeding-edge
systems.

If you want more info, it's there in the man pages. There are also RPM
forums around.

./heLen