How to determine whether a given Linux is 32 bit or 64 bit?

Question

Try uname -m. Which is short of uname --machine and it outputs:

x86_64 ==> 64-bit kernel
i686   ==> 32-bit kernel

---

Otherwise, not for the Linux kernel, but for the CPU, you type:

cat /proc/cpuinfo

or:

grep flags /proc/cpuinfo

Under "flags" parameter, you will see various values: see "What do the flags in /proc/cpuinfo mean?" Among them, one is named lm: Long Mode (x86-64: amd64, also known as Intel 64, i.e. 64-bit capable)

lm ==> 64-bit processor

Or using lshw (as mentioned below by Rolf of Saxony), without sudo (just for grepping the cpu width):

lshw -class cpu|grep "^       width"|uniq|awk '{print $2}'

Note: you can have a 64-bit CPU with a 32-bit kernel installed.
(as ysdx mentions in his/her own answer, "Nowadays, a system can be multiarch so it does not make sense anyway. You might want to find the default target of the compiler")

If you were running a 64 bit platform you would see x86_64 or something very similar in the output from uname -a

To get your specific machine hardware name run

uname -m

You can also call

getconf LONG_BIT

which returns either 32 or 64

lscpu will list out these among other information regarding your CPU:

Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
...

Another useful command for easy determination is as below:

Command:

getconf LONG_BIT

Answer:

• 32, if OS is 32 bit
• 64, if OS is 64 bit

The command

$ arch    

is equivalent to

$ uname -m

but is twice as fast to type

I was wondering about this specifically for building software in Debian (the installed Debian system can be a 32-bit version with a 32 bit kernel, libraries, etc., or it can be a 64-bit version with stuff compiled for the 64-bit rather than 32-bit compatibility mode).

Debian packages themselves need to know what architecture they are for (of course) when they actually create the package with all of its metadata, including platform architecture, so there is a packaging tool that outputs it for other packaging tools and scripts to use, called dpkg-architecture. It includes both what it's configured to build for, as well as the current host. (Normally these are the same though.) Example output on a 64-bit machine:

DEB_BUILD_ARCH=amd64
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_OS=linux
DEB_BUILD_ARCH_CPU=amd64
DEB_BUILD_GNU_CPU=x86_64
DEB_BUILD_GNU_SYSTEM=linux-gnu
DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE=x86_64-linux-gnu
DEB_HOST_ARCH=amd64
DEB_HOST_ARCH_OS=linux
DEB_HOST_ARCH_CPU=amd64
DEB_HOST_GNU_CPU=x86_64
DEB_HOST_GNU_SYSTEM=linux-gnu
DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE=x86_64-linux-gnu

You can print just one of those variables or do a test against their values with command line options to dpkg-architecture.

I have no idea how dpkg-architecture deduces the architecture, but you could look at its documentation or source code (dpkg-architecture and much of the dpkg system in general are Perl).

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    printf("%d\n", __WORDSIZE);
    return 0;
}