diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 428ca5de5f6ae..91260bb681c71 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -7,6 +7,14 @@ CYTHON ?= cython
 NOSETESTS ?= nosetests
 CTAGS ?= ctags
 
+# skip doctests on 32bit python
+BITS := $(shell python -c 'import struct; print(8 * struct.calcsize("P"))')
+
+ifeq ($(BITS),32)
+  NOSETESTS:=$(NOSETESTS) -c setup32.cfg
+endif
+
+
 all: clean inplace test
 
 clean-ctags:
@@ -28,9 +36,11 @@ test-code: in
 test-sphinxext:
 	$(NOSETESTS) -s -v doc/sphinxext/
 test-doc:
+ifeq ($(BITS),64)
 	$(NOSETESTS) -s -v doc/*.rst doc/modules/ doc/datasets/ \
 	doc/developers doc/tutorial/basic doc/tutorial/statistical_inference \
 	doc/tutorial/text_analytics
+endif
 
 test-coverage:
 	rm -rf coverage .coverage
diff --git a/setup32.cfg b/setup32.cfg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000..7294cb813fc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/setup32.cfg
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+# This config file is here to skip doctests on 32bit linux when running make or make test
+# For newer versions of nose, we can simply use "NOSE_IGNORE_CONFIG_FILES", which
+# we should do in the future.
+
+[aliases]
+# python2.7 has upgraded unittest and it is no longer compatible with some
+# of our tests, so we run all through nose
+test = nosetests
+
+[nosetests]
+# nosetests skips test files with the executable bit by default
+# which can silently hide failing tests.
+# There are no executable scripts within the scikit-learn project
+# so let's turn the --exe flag on to avoid skipping tests by
+# mistake.
+exe = 1
+cover-html = 1
+cover-html-dir = coverage
+cover-package = sklearn
+
+detailed-errors = 1
+with-doctest = 0