Google Earth and others apt source constantly updating and breaking itself

[oshunluvr]

I have Google Earth Pro installed. Apparently there's no Google support for 32 bit architecture any longer, which is fine because I haven't had a 32 bit CPU in a decade. The problem is - and it's well reported all of the web, the repository file in /etc/apt/sources.d/ causes an update error;

N: Skipping acquire of configured file 'main/binary-i386/Packages' as repository 'http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb stable InRelease' doesn't support architecture 'i386'

The fix is easy enough, just add [arch=amd64] to the sources line;

deb[B] [arch=amd64] [/B]http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/ stable main

BUT for some up-to-now unknown reason, the sources list reverts to the old entry. Obvious Google is at fault, blah, blah, blah, but I want a solution. There's a hint in the sources file;

###[B] THIS FILE IS AUTOMATICALLY CONFIGURED [/B]#### You may comment out this entry, but any other modifications may be lost.
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/ stable main

So here's what I found that should fix it for good, or at least for a longer time. The above "Automatic Configuration" comes from this file: /etc/cron.daily/google-earth-pro

Open this file and look at lines 23-24:

# sources.list setting for google-earth-pro updates.
REPOCONFIG="deb http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/ stable main"

So by changing line 24 to;

REPOCONFIG="deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/ stable main"

the problem stops reoccurring.