It seems in coreutils-5.93, the UNAME_HARDWARE_PLATFORM define was deemed pointless and removed from the uname/cpuinfo patch. This causes the second field defined in that patch to never print on linux systems. For some archs, this field contains useful information, such as a the machine type. Aforementioned changed: http://www.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/src/patchsets/coreutils/5.93/generic/Attic/003_all_coreutils-gentoo-uname.patch?hidecvsroot=1&hideattic=0&r2=1.5&root=gentoo&r1=1.4&diff_format=u Standard uname -a: Linux dol-guldur 2.6.17-rc5-mipsgit-20060528 #3 SMP Sun May 28 20:57:27 EDT 2006 mips64 R14000 V2.3 FPU V0.0 GNU/Linux With the define re-added: Linux dol-guldur 2.6.17-rc5-mipsgit-20060528 #3 SMP Sun May 28 20:57:27 EDT 2006 mips64 R14000 V2.3 FPU V0.0 SGI Octane GNU/Linux Not all archs probably need the second field, but in the case of MIPS (and maybe ppc/ppc64), it's useful as it reports the machine type. A patch is attached that reverses this change.
Created attachment 88380 [details, diff] Add UNAME_HARDWARE_PLATFORM back for linux systems
More specific, uname -i does not get set, which is ignored in uname -a if it is unknown. Linux powerbook 2.6.17-rc3 #2 Fri May 5 17:44:52 MDT 2006 ppc 7447A, altivec supported GNU/Linux Linux powerbook 2.6.17-rc3 #2 Fri May 5 17:44:52 MDT 2006 ppc 7447A, altivec supported PowerBook5,6 GNU/Linux
added back in
