Possible values for `uname -m`

Question

The uname(1) command-line utility has a -m option which prints the "machine hardware name".

On Linux, this field comes from the machine member of struct utsname , as populated by the uname(2) system call.

Many other language APIs return this information:

• Python: os.uname() and platform.machine()
• PHP: php_uname()

What are the possible values for the "machine" field?

Answer 1

Linux

(v4.12 - 2017-July)

Let's refer to the source of the newuname system call.

Tracking this down is complicated by the fact that Linux has UTS namespaces , but the init_uts_ns machine field is initialized by the UTS_MACHINE macro, which is defined per-architecture.

Further complicating matters, machine can be overridden via override_architecture() , if the process is running under a 32-bit "compat" personality, to COMPAT_UTS_MACHINE .

UTS_MACHINE defaults in Makefile to the same thing as ARCH . However, many platforms have separate sub-architectures under the same arch directory, so they set UTS_MACHINE themselves

With the list of directories in arch/ and a little grep -ing of the Linux kernel sources ( git grep 'UTS_MACHINE\\s*:=' and git grep COMPAT_UTS_MACHINE ), we can arrive at this list:

• alpha

• arc

• arm

• aarch64_be ( arm64 )
• aarch64 ( arm64 )
• armv8b ( arm64 compat)

• armv8l ( arm64 compat)

• blackfin

• c6x
• cris
• frv
• h8300
• hexagon
• ia64
• m32r
• m68k
• metag
• microblaze
• mips (native or compat)
• mips64 ( mips )
• mn10300
• nios2
• openrisc
• parisc (native or compat)
• parisc64 ( parisc )
• ppc ( powerpc native or compat)
• ppc64 ( powerpc )
• ppcle ( powerpc native or compat)
• ppc64le ( powerpc )
• s390 ( s390x compat)
• s390x
• score
• sh
• sh64 ( sh )
• sparc (native or compat)
• sparc64 ( sparc )
• tile
• unicore32
• i386 ( x86 )
• i686 ( x86 compat)
• x86_64 ( x64 )
• xtensa