Getting information on a running Linux kernel

All information

Using the -a/—all flag will print all the available information about the kernel.

$uname -a
Linux hostname 3.13.0-88-generic #135-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jun 8 21:10:42 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

In this example, we see the kernel name, the hostname, the kernel release number, the kernel version, the machine hardware name, the processor type, the hardware platform , and the operating system name.

Any of those fields can be queried individually using other flags.

Getting details of Linux kernel.

We can use command uname with various options to get complete details of running kernel.

uname -a Linux df1-ws-5084 4.4.0-64-generic #85-Ubuntu SMP Mon Feb 20 11:50:30 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

As per man page here few more options

Usage: uname [OPTION]… Print certain system information. With no OPTION, same as -s.

-a, —all print all information, in the following order, except omit -p and -i if unknown: -s, —kernel-name print the kernel name -n, —nodename print the network node hostname -r, —kernel-release print the kernel release -v, —kernel-version print the kernel version -m, —machine print the machine hardware name -p, —processor print the processor type (non-portable) -i, —hardware-platform print the hardware platform (non-portable) -o, —operating-system print the operating system —help display this help and exit —version output version information and exit