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Most packages that aren’t gotten through the default package manager are compiled for a single architecture (x86, amd64, ARM, etc), therefore it is useful to have a quick way to check whether the system is 32 or 64 bit, so an if statement can be used to do the appropriate action.

#uname prints system info, like kernel, processor, etc. uname -m prints hardware name
if [ $(uname -m) == "amd64" ]; then
    ARCH=64
else
    ARCH=32
fi

Now you can access $ARCH anywhere else in your program like so:

if [ $ARCH == "32" ]; then
    #Download 32 bit package
else
    #Download 64 bit package
fi

About Josh Gachnang

Josh Gachnang is a small business consultant with 5 years of experience in developing IT systems. His specialties include moving IT infrastructure to the cloud, standard and mobile web development using Python and Django, and promoting with social media. BASH