proper way to determine arch of *installed* OS, not processor?

[Pongo Pan]

On Fri, 2011-05-06 at 13:55 -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:

>   i should have been clearer that i need something that is
> linux-agnostic; hence my reference to "uname", but i don't remember if
> any of the uname options specifically report "32" when it's a 32-bit
> install on a 64-bit system.
> 
>   i see this very question on an occasional basis, so there must be an
> answer somewhere.


I've got 32 bit Mint XFCE installed on this 64 bit veteran:


  pongo at diogenes ~ $ uname -a
  Linux diogenes 2.6.32-5-686 #1 SMP Wed Jan 12 04:01:41 UTC 2011 i686
GNU/Linux

Looks like uname correctly reports the i686 kernel.  It says "unknown"
for the -i (hardware platform) and -p (processor) options.  Hardware
details in my .sig are from /proc/cpuinfo and /proc/meminfo via some
python.


-- 
pongo pan
Diogenes up 30 min, 2 users, load average: 0.06, 0.08, 0.15
AMD Turion(tm) 64 Mobile Technology ML-30
Memory: 2008796 kB Free: 1108644 kB
Linux 2.6.32-5-686
Linux Mint Xfce Edition