Re: uname -p output on Itanium machine

[Bob Proulx]

Dianne Womelduff wrote:
> I am currently supporting several different platform/OS versions
> and would like to use uname -p to get the processor type.

Ew...  I would not rely upon that myself.  It is not covered by any
standard.

  http://www.unix-systems.org/single_unix_specification_v2/xcu/uname.html

> This works on Solaris 5.8 and Linux RedHat 2.4.20-18.8, returning sparc
> and i686 respectively.

It definitely fails on HP-UX, IBM AIX, and all of my GNU/Linux
machines.  YMMV.

> However, running on Linux 2.4.7-10 and Linux 2.4.18-e.25smp, they both
> return "unknown"
> Here is the output from uname -a
> 
> Linux breeze5 2.4.7-10 #1 Thu Sep 6 17:27:27 EDT 2001 i686 unknown
> 
> Linux brisk0 2.4.18-e.25smp #1 SMP Thu Feb 6 15:33:05 EST 2003 ia64
> unknown
> 
> Can you explain why this happens?

Personally I would like to see the -p option removed.  It is only
trouble.

On Linux if you wish to determine the processor I think the best you
can do is process /proc/cpuinfo.  Be warned that the fields are
machine dependent.  That is, different on different machines.

You said you were "supporting several different platform/OS versions"
and so I am curious.  What would you need to know the processor type
for in that scenario?

Bob