HOWTO: Determine if Linux is 32-bit or 64-bit

If you need to check if a Linux installation is running on a 32-bit or a 64-bit processes, you can use the uname command for that:

$ uname -i
i386

i386 is a 32-bit machine, while x86_64 or ia64 are 64-bit cpu’s

You can check /proc/cpuinfo for more information about the number and types of cpu on a system.

If you want to check the version of an executable file on Linux, you can do so with the readelf command

readelf -h oracle

ELF Header:
  Magic:   7f 45 4c 46 01 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
  Class:                             ELF32
  Data:                              2's complement, little endian
  Version:                           1 (current)
  OS/ABI:                            UNIX - System V
  ABI Version:                       0
  Type:                              EXEC (Executable file)
  Machine:                           Intel 80386
  Version:                           0x1
  Entry point address:               0x829934c
  Start of program headers:          52 (bytes into file)
  Start of section headers:          84699856 (bytes into file)
  Flags:                             0x0
  Size of this header:               52 (bytes)
  Size of program headers:           32 (bytes)
  Number of program headers:         8
  Size of section headers:           40 (bytes)
  Number of section headers:         31
  Section header string table index: 28