uname: Just a simple little tool

A year and a half of this little adventure, and not a single program starting with the letter U. How is that possible? 😕

And as luck would have it, the U section is off to a rocky start. I’ve already had to dump three or four programs for being either dysfunctional, lost or trivial. I got all the way to coreutils‘ uname before I found something worthy.

uname doesn’t do a lot — except give information on the kernel, operating system and small details like that. Hand it the -a flag, and it will tell you everything it knows.

kmandla@6m47421: ~$ uname -a
Linux 6m47421 3.14.6-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Jun 8 10:57:49 CEST 2014 i686 GNU/Linux

You can parse out bits of that line with different flags — -r gives you the kernel revision, -o is the operating system, and so forth. The complete list is in the --help output.

And that’s about it. It’s useful when you want to pluck out specifics about the system and route them through other programs, or if you just need to know exactly what software is coursing through your computer’s veins.

It’s also good for …

Fabulous adventures with toilet! 😉