The uname() function stores information identifying the current operating system in the structure pointed to by name.

The uname() function uses the utsname structure, defined in <sys/utsname.h>, whose members include:

char    sysname[SYS_NMLN];
char    nodename[SYS_NMLN];
char    release[SYS_NMLN];
char    version[SYS_NMLN];
char    machine[SYS_NMLN];

The uname() function returns a null-terminated character string naming the current operating system in the character array sysname. Similarly, the nodename member contains the name by which the system is known on a communications network. The release and version members further identify the operating system. The machine member contains a standard name that identifies the hardware on which the operating system is running.

Upon successful completion, a non-negative value is returned. Otherwise, -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

The uname() function will fail if:

EFAULT

The name argument points to an illegal address.

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

uname(1), sysinfo(2), sysconf(3C), attributes(5)