I have Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon installed on a machine with an Intel E2140 64bit Dual Core processor.

Is there a command I can run to show what version, 32bit or 64bit, of the Gutsy Gibbon I have installed. I think it's 32bit, but I can't for the life of me find anything to verify that.

uname -a shows:
Linux bs-ubuntu64 2.6.22-15-generic #1 SMP Wed Aug 20 15:47:07 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I named it bs-ubuntu64, but I don't recall knowing for sure that it was a 64bit version of the OS. I think the x86_64 there is just about the processor.

Thanks for any enlightenment...

The x86_64 means it was built for the AMD64 (and Intel EMT64) - otherwise you'd see i386 or i686.
You can also look at the kernel configuration in /boot/config-$(uname -r)

Ok... interesting.

So, are you saying that the x86_64, in the uname command, describes the GNU/Linux part of that output, saying the installed GNU/Linux is 64bit?

Also, that config files has about 42 brazillion lines in it!! ;-)

A couple of them are:
CONFIG_64BIT=y
CONFIG_RESOURCES_64BIT=y

That looks promising for a 64bit verification, but I'm still curious if there is some ubuntu specific command that will say, without having to decrypt a bunch of lines in a config file, "Hey, your version of unbuntu is a 64bit version."

After I posted this thread, as I was still scrounging around the room, I found the CD that says "Ubuntu 7.10 for your 64-bit PC". It's been a while and I just didn't recall the version.

But, this is still a valid question about finding a command to verify the 'bit' version.

Thanks . . .

Well, the other thing to check is your libc:

dpkg -s libc6 | grep Arch

There should also be an "arch" or a "mach" command - my system doesn't have either. In fact, "man -k arch" suggests that I have arch (1), but "man arch" or "man 1 arch" tells me there is no documentation for "arch". grrrr...

If you have a compiler installed you can also do:
gcc -V|grep Target

Well, that's weird, that dpkg command gives me:

bs@bs-ubuntu64:~$ dpkg -s libc6 | grep Arch
Architecture: amd64

The processor is definitely an Intel E2140.

And, even there, it looks like that's just telling me about the processor, which I know is 64bit.

I guess the bottom line here is to be able to interpret, from my previous post and this one, the results of these outputs to know if it's talking about the OS 'bit'ness or the CPU architecture.

(Keeping in mind you can run a 32bit OS on a 64bit machine... for the benefit of others who happen across this thread.)

That seems right; AMD put the 64 bit x86 arch out there first (allegations are that Intel could have been first, but were too interested in protecting their Itanium business) and, in order that they were both compatible, Intel copied. So the Intel version is AMD64, in broad architectural terms - the microarchitecture is entirely different, of course.

The x86_64 in the uname output describes the hardware platform which you already know is x86_64. The output of uname -a is the kernel name, the network node hostname, the kernel release, the kernel version, the machine hardware name, the processor type or "unknown", the hardware platform or "unknown", and the operating system. The bs-ubuntu64 is good indication that it's a 64-bit OS, but the CONFIG_64BIT=y is the sure give away.

I'm pretty sure that is tell you software (not hardware) has "Architecture: amd64".

To check whether the hardware is 64 bit, I would look for "lm" in the flags line in the output from
cat /proc/cpuinfo

I'm pretty sure you're wrong. The x86_64 in uname output has matched the software (kernel) wherever I've seen uname output. I have certainly done uname on 64 bit hardware running a 32 bit kernel and uname did not say "x86_64".