uname Question

Bob Chiodini rchiodin at bellsouth.net
Sat Apr 23 02:04:28 UTC 2005


On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 15:11 -0500, Alex White wrote:
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> Bob Chiodini wrote:
> | Where does uname get the hardware platform (-i) information?  Why,
> on a
> | Pentium 4 running an SMP version of the kernel, would i386 be
> reported?
> | The -p and -m options both report i686.  Isn't this slightly
> | inconsistent?
> |
> | On an AMD 64 system x86_64 is reported for all options (-i, -p and
> - -m).
> |
> | Bob...
> 
> Bob, I don't think that's necessarily inconsistent. Reading the
> infor on coreutils uname the -i option reports the hardware platform
> also known as the hardware implementation. Since on an AMD 64 system
> it reports x86_64, that seems normal. On an ix86 system, I would
> expect it to at least print that information with an ix86 platform.
> 
> I believe (and I may be wholly incorrect here), the kernel that runs
> on most ix86 platforms are i386 kernels. I think there was
> discussion at some point on our list about i386 kernels and i686 so
> on and so forth being compiled and installed. I don't recall that
> conversation though in full, thusly I can't speak with authority.
> 
> Sincerely
> 
> - --
> Alex White

Alex,

I got the impression, back in the old days (FC1 :-)) when you could
build a 686 specific kernel, that there was some specific 686 code in
it.

Probably a better question on my part would be:  What's the difference
between the processor, the hardware platform and the machine hardware
name?

Bob...




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