How to extract architecture part from kernel naming

Question

I kept bumping into it all the time, only now when I need it I can't find it anywhere! What architecture is the kernel of my machine?

2.6.18-194.el5

Answer 1

running uname with the -a flag should give you more information

uname -a gives me

Linux pc-name 2.6.35-23-generic #41~lucid1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Dec 2 22:30:17 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

If you look around in the uname man pages There are other flags that will let you extract the arch only.

uname -m (for machine) gives me i686 although not all of the flags will give you meaningful results on all systems, uname -i and uname -p (for "hardware platform" and "processor" )both give me unkown if you need to do it programmatically, you will probably be better off parsing the uname -a output.