the "proper" way to identify the bitness of your kernel and CPU

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Fri, 3 Apr 2009, Sharpe, Sam J wrote:

> 2009/4/3 Robert P. J. Day <rpjday at crashcourse.ca>:
> > On Fri, 3 Apr 2009, Sharpe, Sam J wrote:
> >
> >> [sam at machine ~]$ [[ $(grep lm /proc/cpuinfo) ]] && echo x86_64 || echo i686
> >> x86_64 (this represents the processor architecture)
> >
> >  and your opinion of
> >
> >  $ getconf LONG_BIT
> >
> > i'm guessing that is equally informative, yes?
>
> Apparently not, but I didn't know this until I did a bit of
> reading/experimenting.
>
> Take my example machine before which has a 64bit capable CPU but a
> 32bit OS: [sam at machine ~]$ getconf LONG_BIT 32
>
> As you can see, it printing the kernel architecture, not a property
> of the CPU. I think /proc/cpuinfo is always the right place to look,
> because getconf reports only on kernel properties.

  hmmmm ... quite right.  i stand corrected.

rday
--

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry:
    Have classroom, will lecture.

http://crashcourse.ca                          Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
========================================================================