How to detect 386, amd64, arm, or arm64 OS architecture via shell/bash

Question

I'm looking for a POSIX shell/bash command to determine if the OS architecture is 386, amd64, arm, or arm64?

This is not quite a duplicate of https://stackoverflow.com/a/45125525, but it is similar. — ephemient, Feb 08 '18 at 06:53

score 39 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 08 '18 at 06:53

39

uname -m

prints values such as x86_64, i686, arm, or aarch64.

answered Feb 08 '18 at 06:53

ephemient

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Humm, so on a Raspberry pi output is `armv7l`. Would that be arm or arm64? – Justin Feb 08 '18 at 06:57
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@Justin 64-bit was introduced in ARM v8, so `armv7l` means 32-bit little-endian ARM. That being said, if you're on an RPi3: the processor is actually 64-bit, but if your OS is in 32-bit mode it reports an older model. – ephemient Feb 08 '18 at 07:12
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aarch64 is the same as arm64 (64-bit ARM) armv71 is 32-bit ARM – Alex W Apr 20 '20 at 00:36

score 31 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 02 '21 at 01:35

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I suggest using:

dpkg --print-architecture

answered Jan 02 '21 at 01:35

Roman Panaget

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And more accurate: `uname -m` outputs `aarch64` on Raspberry instead of `arm64`. – Pouriya Zarbafian Aug 27 '21 at 09:21
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@PouriyaZarbafian in what sense is that "more accurate" ? – Yolo Perdiem Feb 18 '22 at 15:22
@YoloPerdiem you're right, apparently they're the same thing. – Pouriya Zarbafian Feb 21 '22 at 09:09
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@PouriyaZarbafian That's not what I meant. They are not equivalent. https://github.com/lxc/lxc/issues/129 – Yolo Perdiem Feb 22 '22 at 16:07
@YoloPerdiem they're the same in the specific case that I was mentioning (Raspberry), but according to your link `dpkg --print-architecture` would be more accurate as the question is about OS architecture. – Pouriya Zarbafian Feb 23 '22 at 07:00

Justin · Answer 3 · 2018-02-08T07:25:36.190

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I went with the following:

architecture=""
case $(uname -m) in
    i386)   architecture="386" ;;
    i686)   architecture="386" ;;
    x86_64) architecture="amd64" ;;
    arm)    dpkg --print-architecture | grep -q "arm64" && architecture="arm64" || architecture="arm" ;;
esac

edited Feb 08 '18 at 07:25

answered Feb 08 '18 at 07:14

Justin

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While you're at it, you might as well collapse the first two branches in your case logic to `i386 | i686) architecture="386" ;;` It's always good to include a catch-all branch at the end, too, to the effect of `*) echo "Unable to determine system architecture."; exit 1 ;;` – Peter J. Mello Jun 27 '21 at 02:34
On my Intel machine `uname -m` == "x86_64" – DUzun Aug 07 '21 at 15:39

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 25 '21 at 22:38

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$ lscpu | grep Architecture

Architecture:                    x86_64

Or if you want to get only the value:

 $ lscpu | awk '/Architecture:/{print $2}'

x86_64

answered Mar 25 '21 at 22:38

Zstack

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score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 17 '21 at 09:50

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$ arch

Also works. Tested on Debian-based and RPM-based distros.

answered Jul 17 '21 at 09:50

Ilia Sidorenko

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With `arch` you get the architecture of the current terminal. The real OS architecture may be different – Noam Nol Feb 16 '22 at 15:46

How to detect 386, amd64, arm, or arm64 OS architecture via shell/bash

5 Answers5