SuSE Linux find kernel bit version

[Karthik S S]

Hi,

How can I find out if I am running 32bit or 64bit linux?? uname doesnt show this info!

Thanks in advance,
Karthik S S

[Steven E. Protter]

Find the vmunix file

cd /boot on my distribution.

file vmlinux....

That will give you the bit size.

SEP

[Karthik S S]

Hello Sep,

Thanks for you response.

However file vmuniz.XXX didnt return any useful info. on the bit version.

Thanks,
Karthik S S

[Michael Williams_6 · Accepted solution]

Hello there, I'm running SLES8 (32bit) and SLES9 (64bit), so I presume the following will work for any SuSE product, but I can tell the following by:

32bit:
michaelw@linpo: echo $HOSTTYPE
i386

64bit:
helpdesk:~ # echo $HOSTTYPE
x86_64

[Karthik S S]

Thank you Michael. Is it possible to run 32 bit kernel on 64 bit machine??

Because, I needed this info. for one of my friend and he says that he has a IA64 machine running with a 32 bit version of SuSE Linux!

Thanks,
Karthik S S

[Michael Williams_6]

Yes you can, I think the exact message is "Cool computer, but you're running a 32-bit OS on a 64bit computer!"

Which is mildly amusing, but it runs without any issues at all...

Please bear in mind that I'm running on an Intel EM64T processor, but the theory is the same for the AMD 64bit processor...

Mike

[Serviceguard for Linux]

Minor clarification.

IA64 machines from HP are the Integrity systems with Itanium processors. You cannot load an IA32 version of the OS on these machines.

And, yes, you can run the IA32 bit OS on the EM64T and AMD64 based machines. As I remember SUSE doesn't have a 64bit version for the EM64T machines, so if you need SUSE9 to support some app, then you must run it in IA32 mode.

[Michael Williams_6]

Good point - I'd forgotten about Itanium! 32bit Linux won't work on that!

And SLES9 is the Enterprise Linux that is 64-bit capable, I wouldn't recommend installing the normal SuSE Linux on HP hardware as it's not supported!

[Subbu_2]

HI,
Try using "/usr/bin/isainfo -kv". This will show the kernet bit version.

Subbu