openjdk-7-jre:i386 rejects to install because of unmet dependencies

[Martin Vysny]

Good day, thank you for your hard work on Ubuntu! I am currently trying freshly installed 12.04 x86-64 (in virtualbox), and openjdk-7-jre:i386 fails to install:

$ sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends openjdk-7-jre:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 openjdk-7-jre:i386 : Depends: libgnome2-0:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                      Depends: libgnomevfs2-0:i386 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

"sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends openjdk-6-jre:i386" seems to work just fine.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: openjdk-7-jre:i386 (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-27.43-generic 3.2.21
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-27-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu11
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Jul 27 09:23:46 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: openjdk-7
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Xerxes Rånby (xranby)]

I think you need to refresh the list of available packages. try run
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends openjdk-7-jre:i386

[Martin Vysny (vyzivus)]

I have just performed a clean install of Ubuntu desktop 12.04.1 x86-64 to a virtual machine. The installation is fully upgraded. The problem is still present.

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

no, libgnome2 isn't ready for multiarch. please use the amd64 packages.

[Martin Vysny (vyzivus)]

In 64bit Ubuntu 12.10 the 32bit java 7 package installs cleanly and works correctly.