Jyothi's Weblog

System information commands

The uname command provides information about your current system.
$ uname -a
provides the information in the following order:
1.OS type
2.hostname (nodename)
3.OS version and build
4.machine architecture
5.processor type
6.machine model.

The default option is -s, which prints only the name of the operating
system. Other options supported with uname are :
-i :  name of the platform. For example,
Sun-Fire-T200
-m: machine hardware name (class). Use of this option is discouraged. Use uname -p instead.
-n : nodename (the computer's identity) .
-p:  current host's ISA or processor type.
-r : operating system release level. A
machine running Solaris 10 will print 5.10
-s:  name of the operating system. This is the default.
-S: system_name .The nodename may be changed by specifying a system name argument. Only the
super user is allowed this capability.
-v :operating system version.Provides tracking info about the kernel patch number.Prints only "Generic" if there is no kernel patch for a particular release, otherwise prints "Generic_108528-xx"
-X: expanded system information.

Include the following line in your .bashrc file to display username@host and current directory at your shell's command prompt.
export PS1 = "[\u@\h \w]\$ "
For username jyothi, whose machine is sun1, in directory /home, the prompt will be displayed as [jyothi@sun1 /home]$.

Some of the other related commands that provide user and group information are :

showrev - Displays revision information for the current hardware and software.
groups – Lists all the groups that you belong to.
logname – Prints your current login name
id – prints current user id and group id
users – Compact list of users who are logged in.
whoami - prints the effective current user name
who – prints a list of users who are on the system. To search for a specific user, pipe the output of who to the grep command.

$ who | grep username

Refer to the individual man pages for more information on each of the commands.

Posted at 01:35PM Apr 04, 2007 by Jyothi Srinath in Sun  |  Comments[1]