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Operating Systems => Linux and UNIX => Topic started by: Agent007 on 11 December 2002, 10:44

Title: i386 kernel on i686 system?
Post by: Agent007 on 11 December 2002, 10:44

hi all,

The following is the output from the uname command:

uname -m ( prints machine hardware name)
i686

but,

uname -i  ( prints the hardware platform)
i386

Does this mean that the kernel is using the i386 version? If I recompile the kernel to i686, there will be a big boost in performance correct?

thanks,
007

Title: i386 kernel on i686 system?
Post by: voidmain on 11 December 2002, 11:13

That is normal. The i386 basically means it's an x86. It says that on all my machines. Now I am not sure if the i686 means the currently installed kernel is optimized for i686 or if the machine is i686 capable, I presume it's the capability of the hardware since I have an athlon optimized kernel installed.

What distro of Linux are you running? Red Hat will automatically install the kernel*.i686.rpm kernel if you have an i686 capable system. In fact they also include an kernel*.athlon.rpm which is what was installed on my system (as I already mentioned), but uname on my system shows exactly what yours shows. I'm not sure about the other distros but if you let me know which distro you are using I can check it out.

This is what a "uname -a" shows on my athlon system:

Linux kidslinux 2.4.20 #11 Fri Dec 6 15:39:43 CST 2002 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

[ December 11, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

Title: i386 kernel on i686 system?
Post by: Agent007 on 11 December 2002, 13:08

Yup..Thanks for the info. The output from my system is the same. Btw, am running RH8

thanks for ur help!
007