Question to uname

[SebastianZ]

Hi all,

I have two computers, one with the Ubuntu-based Mint (actually it is a colleague's computer) and the second with Debian-based Mint. Yesterday I had a strange problem: a program (Xilinx ISE Toolchain for programming FPGAs) worked on the Ubuntu-based Mint, but not on the Debian-based Mint. After a little work I found out that it was a problem with the uname-command. The toolchain wasn't able to get the information about the system.

In Ubuntu-based Mint uname printed the following information:

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$ uname -a
Linux xilinxmint1 3.13.0-24-generic #47-Ubuntu SMP Fri May 2 23:30:00 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ uname -i
x86_64

in Debian-based Mint uname printed:

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$ uname -a
Linux xilinxmint2 3.11-2-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.11.8-1 (2013-11-13) x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ uname -i
unknown

So my simple solution was to copy the working uname binary to the Debian-based Mint. And now it is working. I know this is not a very good solution. This is why I'm asking here. I didn't find any more information by googling. Is it possible, that this problem is because of an old version of uname?

Thanks for helping!!!
Sebastian

[Zill]

SebastianZ: Firstly, let me welcome you to Linux Mint forums and I trust that you will enjoy using this great distro. If you would like to post in the "Introduce yourself" section it will be great to hear a bit more about who you are and how you got here!

uname is part of package coreutils, which in LMDE is at version 8.21-1. I have also tested uname with Debian Jessie's latest coreutils version 8.23-3 and get the same result and so it isn't that LMDE is outdated. My guess is that Ubuntu have patched coreutils themselves which is why you get a different result with Ubuntu-based Mint.

This problem actually goes back to 2005 and so, unfortunately, I doubt you will find it gets resolved very soon! See Debian Bug #655428 for more details.

As a workaround, you can use the "-m" option which should provide the information you require.

[SebastianZ]

Hi Zill,

thank you very much for your fast response. It seems a little bit funny (or even annoying) that different Linux OS use slightly different versions of some commands.

Sebastian

[killer de bug]

That seems crazy that tools are in development and that some distros fix them for their needs?

[SebastianZ]

No, this wasn't my statement. I'm wondering why such a fundamental command like uname doesn't behave the same way after 10 years (as far as I understand). Of course distris have to fix bugs by their own, but after that I would expect, that they are fixed everywhere. But never mind, it is working now and this is the most important thing.

Sebastian

[Zill]

Unfortunately, I believe Canonical/Ubuntu have a bit of a reputation for "doing their own thing" and not sending fixes upstream so that other distros can benefit.