[ubuntu-uk] uname -a for 32 bit os on 64 bit cpu

[Colin Law]

2011/11/14 Juan J. <reidrac at usebox.net>:
> On Mon, 2011-11-14 at 22:22 +0000, Colin Law wrote:
>> [...]
>> >
>> > TL;DR: it doesn't matter what is your hardware, the important it's which
>> > kernel are your running.
>>
>> It does matter what the hardware is if you want to know whether you
>> *could* run the 64 bit kernel.
>
> ... and you're running a 32 bit kernel. OK, fair enough.
>
> I wouldn't use uname. "lm" in the CPU flags in /proc/cpuinfo it's the
> best bet.

That is not the point really.  The point is that the man page for
uname is misleading.  The heading says
   uname - print system information
which is ambiguous, it does not indicate whether it is talking about
hardware or installed software, and for -i for example it says

       -i, --hardware-platform
              print the hardware platform or "unknown"

which suggests that it is talking about the hardware platform the
software is running on.

Colin