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man pages section 2: System Calls

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Updated: July 2017
 
 

uname(2)

Name

uname - get name of current operating system

Synopsis

#include <sys/utsname.h>

int uname(struct utsname *name);

Description

The uname() function stores information identifying the current operating system in the structure pointed to by name.

The uname() function uses the utsname structure, defined in <sys/utsname.h>, whose members include:

char    sysname[SYS_NMLN];
char    nodename[SYS_NMLN];
char    release[SYS_NMLN];
char    version[SYS_NMLN];
char    machine[SYS_NMLN];

The uname() function returns a null-terminated character string naming the current operating system in the character array sysname. Similarly, the nodename member contains the name by which the system is known on a communications network. The release and version members further identify the operating system. The machine member contains a standard name that identifies the hardware on which the operating system is running.

Return Values

Upon successful completion, a non-negative value is returned. Otherwise, −1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

Errors

The uname() function will fail if:

EFAULT

The name argument points to an illegal address.

Attributes

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE
ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Interface Stability
Committed
MT-Level
Async-Signal-Safe
Standard

See Also

uname(1), sysinfo(2), sysconf(3C), attributes(5), standards(5)