apt-get update fails with "Unable to find expected entry 'main/binary-i386/Packages' in Release file" on pure x86_64 repos

[Dan Kegel]

(ubuntu-bug wouldn't let me report bugs against apt, go figure.)

I run my own apt repo for a third-party app, and I have to include a dummy i386 package to avoid an error from apt-get.

Along comes Chrome's decision to desupport i386, and suddenly this problem matters to a lot of people,
who are all seeing apt-get update fail with:

W: Failed to fetch http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/dists/stable/Release Unable to find expected entry 'main/binary-i386/Packages' in Release file (Wrong sources.list entry or malformed file)
E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

While it would be easy for Google to include a dummy i386 package in their repo, it would be even better if apt-get didn't barf like this on pure 64 bit repos.

[Dan Kegel (dank)]

Oh, this is on ubuntu 15.10 (i.e. apt 1.0.10.2.ubuntu1), and probably all previous versions.
It does not seem to affect ubuntu 16.04 beta 1 (i.e. apt 1.2.3).

[Dan Kegel (dank)]

Chrome's going to fix it on their end, https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=591480

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

This is a bug on Chrome's site mostly. We made the design choice to request all architectures configured and warn about missing ones. You can tell APT to ignore archs for some sources in your sources.list entry.

[Dan Kegel (dank)]

If it were a warning, I'd agree with you... but it's an error, and it stops my scripts cold.