On 15 November 2011 11:29, Avi Greenbury <li...@avi.co> wrote: > Colin Law wrote: >> On 15 November 2011 09:35, Avi Greenbury <li...@avi.co> wrote: >> > Juan J. wrote: >> > >> >> For -m says "on which the system is running", which doesn't seem >> >> to be coherent with the uname output we are getting in a 64 bit >> >> system running a 32 bit kernel. >> > >> > It depends why you are interested. >> > >> > When a 686 kernel is running on an amd64 chip, it *is* running on >> > 686 hardware (it must be since it is running 686 code), but it is >> > some 686 hardware with extensions such that it can also run amd64 >> > code. >> >> But if you run uname in the 64 bit OS it says that it is running on a >> different type of hardware, which it is not, it is just that the 64 >> bit OS uses the extensions whereas the 32 bit does not. >> > > No, it doesn't. It says exactly what it's running on. > > If you run uname on an amd64 kernel it tells you it's running on amd64 > hardware, which is true even if the processor can also do 686. > > If you run uname on a 686 kernel it tells you it's running on 686 > hardware, which is true even if the processor can also do amd64.
I think you are stretching things a bit here. If you had an amd64 PC with dual boot of Ubuntu 32 and 64 and I asked you what processor type was in the PC (which is what uname -p says it shows) you would not say "hold on a minute I have got to check which OS I am running before I can answer that". However we are just quibbling over the meaning of a few words here, the point is that the documentation is ambiguous, as you are about to point out... > The problem, if there is one, is that uname's man page doesn't > explicitly state that it asks the kernel what it's sat atop, rather > than asking the hardware for its full capabilities. Agreed, plus possibly a few words pointing out the significance of this. I maintain there *is* a problem as people have been confused by the documentation (including myself), therefore it would benefit from clarification, so we don't need to repeat this discussion every few months :) Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
