LKBEN11451: Am I running a 64-bit or a 32-bit linux kernel

Symptom

You do not know if your system is 32 or 64 bit and like to know what you are dealing with.

Cause

Sometime good to know.

Solution

For a linux system to show you what kind of kernel you are running you use the uname command.

uname -a

This will show you something like this:

Linux ubuntu 5.4.0-1019-raspi #21-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Mon Sep 14 07:20:34 UTC 2020 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux

The parameter m will show you the architecture.

uname -m

In cause you see aarch64 or x86_64 you are running a 64-bit kernel.

Here are some more parameters you can use:

       -v, --kernel-version
              print the kernel version

       -m, --machine
              print the machine hardware name

       -p, --processor
              print the processor type (non-portable)

       -i, --hardware-platform
              print the hardware platform (non-portable)

       -o, --operating-system
              print the operating system

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
              output version information and exit
 

About the Author

Wim Peeters is electronics engineer with an additional master in IT and over 30 years of experience including time spent in support, development, consulting, training and database administration. Wim has worked with SQL Server since version 6.5. He has developed in C/C++, Java and C# on Windows and Linux in different European countries and different European languages. He writes knowledge base articles to solve IT problems and publishes them on the Lubby Knowledge Platform where he is one of the most important contributors and the main developer.

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