arm-none-eabi-gdb on 64b debian(mint) - libncurses.so.5: cannot open shared object file

after getting 32 bit support for 64bit debian(mint)

vbmint ~ $ sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

and got openocd to work, tried to get gdb working, and after adding the appropriate PATH

vbmint ~ $ arm-none-eabi-gdb
arm-none-eabi-gdb: error while loading shared libraries: libncurses.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I made sure the libncurses5 existed, and it claims to have multi-arch support.
After a variety of wasted life missteps, that are useless to report, it appears that, libncursesw.so.5.9 that libncurses5 installs is a working i386 lib, so the following fix works

vbmint ~ $ cd /lib/i386-linux-gnu
vbmint /lib/i386-linux-gnu $ sudo ln -sf libncursesw.so.5.9 libncurses.so.5

then -

vbmint ~ $ arm-none-eabi-gdb
GNU gdb (GNU Tools for ARM Embedded Processors) 7.4.1.20130312-cvs
Copyright (C) 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "--host=i686-linux-gnu --target=arm-none-eabi".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>.
(gdb)

It may be useful to someone that libncurses5 installs a symlink for libncurses.so.5 which points to libncurses.so.5.9 in /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu, adding this location to LD_LIBRARY_PATH generates the following

vbmint ~ $ arm-none-eabi-gdb
arm-none-eabi-gdb: error while loading shared libraries: libncurses.so.5: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64

Thought I would share, hopefully save someone some time. SOLVED(ish)!