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

[Pongo Pan]

On Fri, 2011-05-06 at 15:47 -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> On Fri, 6 May 2011, Pongo Pan wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> 
>   ok, so what does "uname -m" report?  this might be what i'm looking
> for.
> 
> rday
> 

Oh oh!

	pongo at diogenes ~ $ uname -m
	i686

Obvously, uname is pretty stupid about hardware.

/proc/cpuinfo should always correctly ID the cpu and you can mostly tell
from that.

-- 
pongo pan
Diogenes up 2:04, 2 users, load average: 0.10, 0.10, 0.09
AMD Turion(tm) 64 Mobile Technology ML-30
Memory: 2008796 kB Free: 902396 kB
Linux 2.6.32-5-686
Linux Mint Xfce Edition