Subject: Re: bug#7991: bug in uname (?)

From: Eric Blake <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2011 15:13:28 -0700

On 02/05/2011 01:31 PM, Noel Kuntze wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> It seems to me that the options for uname, more precise, -v and -r have
> been interchanged.

Thanks for the report.  However, this is not a bug.

> 
> Extract from the shell:
> 
> thermi@debian:~$ uname -v
> #1 SMP Thu Jan 27 00:28:05 UTC 2011
> thermi@debian:~$ uname -r
> 2.6.26-2-686

Look at 'man 2 uname'.  On Linux, the uname.release version contains a
numeric string.  The uname.version field is not documented as to it's
contents, but POSIX merely requires that release and version together
identify the operating system kernel.  As confusing as it may be, this
behavior is a kernel choice, and coreutils uname(1) has no control over
it.  Coreutils is accurately reporting what the kernel told it.

-- 
Eric Blake   [email-masked]    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org