Re: Inconsistent results for checking whether the OS is 32 or 64 bit

On 2024-07-22, Theo wrote:

Adam Funk <a24061@ducksburg.com> wrote:

I'm starting to wonder if I just moved the SD card and external USB
drive from a 2 to a 4B when I got the 4B and kept upgrading. Would
that explain this situation?

>
It looks like it was changed in an update.  I think the Pi maintains
multiple kernels in /boot, so it's possible the same SD card will boot with
a 64-bit kernel on a Pi4 and 32-bit kernel on a Pi2 (especially the v1.0 Pi2
with a Cortex A7 which doesn't support 64 bit).

Right.

So it may not be that moving the card has affected it, just that the single
'32 bit' Pi OS boots a different kernel depending on which hardware you put
the card into.

Well, if I had done a fresh install on a 4B, I would have picked the
64-bit option, so the 32-bit userland is a vestige of that.

(this has caused some troubles for build systems which use uname -m to work
out whether to build 32 or 64: it returns 64, but the right answer is 32.
The same would happen with a 32 bit chroot on a 64 bit x86)

Ouch. Fortunately I haven't run into that.


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