<p>I am writing a bash script to deal with some installations in an automated way... I have the possibility of getting one such program in 32 or 64 bit binary... is it possible to detect the machine architecture from bash so I can select the correct binary?</p>

<p>This will be for Ubuntu machines.</p>

Does
```
```
uname -a
```
```
give you anything you can use?  I don't have a 64-bit machine to test on.
Note from Mike Stone:
This works, though specifically
```
```
uname -m
```
```
Will give "x86_64" for 64 bit, and something else for other 32 bit types (in my 32 bit VM, it's "i686").