NAME

       arch-test - detect architectures your kernel can run binaries of

SYNOPSIS

       arch-test [-n]
              enumerates the architectures

       arch-test [-n] <arch>
              tests a single arch

DESCRIPTION

       When  called  without an argument, arch-test outputs the list of architectures executable by your running
       kernel, one per line, using Debian arch names.  Libc or other libraries are neither needed nor checked  —
       an arch is listed if its machine code can be executed and the appropriate syscall ABI is supported by the
       kernel.   This  means,  you  can  run  these architectures in a chroot or a container, execute them using
       multiarch, run static binaries, etc.  The ability to run  additional  architectures  can  be  gained  via
       binfmts on Linux, Linux emulation on BSD, etc.

       An  architecture  is  considered  runnable only if your kernel can run unmodified binaries, without extra
       steps such as recompiling (Raspbian armhf) or using brandelf on  binaries  you'd  want  to  run  (FreeBSD
       emulation  of  Linux).   Also,  as  Debian requires 686 on i386 as of the stretch release, 686 support is
       checked for.

       If -n is specified, arch-test will try to disable known emulators (currently qemu and wine).  Note that a
       whole-machine emulator appears to be native as far as the kernel is concerned.

       When called with an arch name as an argument, arch-test  tests  the  specified  architecture.   A  human-
       friendly message will be printed, and the exit code can be:

       0      congratulations, the arch can be run on your kernel

       1      failure

       2      cannot check — arch-test lacks a helper for this arch

       (Shell hint: with set -e you write: ret=0; arch-test $ARCH || ret=$?)

   Helper programs
       The detection is done by small programs located in /usr/lib/arch-test/.  These programs check whether the
       running  kernel can execute binaries of a given architecture.  When run, if successful, each such program
       prints "ok" on stdout and returns exit code 0.

       When the check fails, these helper programs may die horribly — always with a non-zero exit code.  Usually
       the kernel will notice the incompatibility and nicely abort the attempt, but in some near-miss cases  the
       failure is more messy, such as SIGILL or SIGSEGV.  If you want to run the helpers directly, you'd want to
       redirect stderr to /dev/null and to disable core dumps (ulimit -c 0).

                                                                                                    arch-test(1)