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Re: [LUG] MACHTYPE

 

On Sun, 22 Apr 2012 09:12:25 +0100
Phil Hudson <phil.hudson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Anyone know if there's any rhyme or reason to the value assigned to  
> this env var? Under Xubuntu my netbook had 'i386', now under Mint LXDE  
> it has -- wait for it -- 'i686-pc-linux-gnu'. No hardware changes  
> whatsoever.

There are no i386 machines out there anymore - not that anyone cares
about. Nobody builds packages (or even compilers) for the 80386 chip
anymore, theoretically Debian is 80486 but that's not much more than a
label. Most cases it's effectively 686. So both descriptions are
correct, although Mint is more precise than Xubuntu.

MACHTYPE isn't even set as an environment variable in Debian, so don't
rely on it. If it's a dpkg-based system, ask dpkg. If it's a kernel
question, ask the kernel.

This is how Debian describes i386:
386     32-bit PC (i386) The first architecture, and not strictly a
port. Linux was originally developed for the Intel 386 processors,
hence the short name. Debian supports all IA-32 processors, made by
Intel (including all Pentium series and recent Core Duo machines in 32
bit mode), AMD (K6, all Athlon series, Athlon64 series in 32 bit mode),
Cyrix and other manufacturers.

http://www.debian.org/ports/

Check the output from the kernel, the compiler default and the
packaging system support.

uname -m
gcc -v
dpkg --print-architecture

For a full list, use dpkg-architecture

i386 is one of the shortnames, the full list for a Debian i386 install
is:

DEB_BUILD_ARCH=i386
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_OS=linux
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_CPU=i386
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_BITS=32
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_ENDIAN=little
DEB_BUILD_GNU_CPU=i486
DEB_BUILD_GNU_SYSTEM=linux-gnu
DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE=i486-linux-gnu

Which one matters depends on what you are trying to achieve.

-- 
Neil Williams <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

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