Determine Linux Server's Architecture (32 or 64 bit)

Question

I actually just have shared hosting at Dreamhost, and I'm going to use it to test deploying a MongoDB based application. There are 32-bit and 64-bit pre-built distros, but I don't know which I should install, until I can determine the server's architecture.

I suppose this can be done by detecting the OS version, but I have no idea how to do that. I can ssh in, though not as root of course, since it's a shared server. I just need to know what command or commands can tell me what architecture is being run on.

Answer 1

"uname -m" or "arch"

Answer 2

The command on Linux/UNIX is:

uname -a 

or for just the architecture:

uname -m

Answer 3

From commandlinefu.com:

getconf LONG_BIT

Answer 4

I think uname may just show you the version of the operating system that's installed, rather than the underlying hardware architecture. To double check, try:

cat /proc/cpuinfo

Answer 5

lshw shows the processor register width like this:

sudo lshw -class processor

Answer 6

there are five different ways in which it can be done:

1. uname -a

2. uname -m

3. file /sbin/init

4. arch

5. through system settings, (for ubuntu > 12.04)

For more details see this blog post