Ubuntu – How to find architecture of the PC and Ubuntu

I encountered the following two errors when trying to install .deb files:

• Wrong architecture
• Unmet dependencies

So no, sometimes if you want to install a Jaunty Package in Maverick (for example) it won't install, because it depends on an OLDER Version of a package than the Version available in Maverick. (however, there are tools to change dependecies-list within a deb file...)

I don't know about the architecture problem, as normally a 64-bit system should support 32bit binaries (however, I don't think it works the other way around)

Create a script, in my example foo

#!/bin/bash

# Create a temporary folder in /tmp
dir=$(mktemp -d)

# Extract the deb file
dpkg -x "$1" "$dir"

printf "\n%s\n\n" "$1"

# Show the package architecture information
dpkg --info $1 | \
    awk '/Architecture/ {printf "defined dpkg architecture is:\t%s\n", $2}'

# Show the executable format via find and awk for ELF
find $dir -type f -exec file -b {} \; | \
        sort -u | \
        awk '/ELF/ {printf "executable format is: \t\t%s\n", $0}'

rm -rf "$dir"

exit 0

Usage

./foo <deb_file>

Example

% ./foo qtox_1.1\~git20150707.cfeeb03-97_i386.deb

qtox_1.1~git20150707.cfeeb03-97_i386.deb

defined dpkg architecture is:   i386
executable format is :          ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (GNU/Linux), statically linked, stripped