Turns out it is not broken ... you're not supposed to use it (!).
See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/coreutils/+bug/111863
Do we need the first para below in the fortune file?
ron
Thank you for your bug report.
This behavior is according to the documentation. Under the
descriptions for both "-i" and "-p", it states, "Print `unknown' if
the kernel does not make this information easily available, as is the
case with Linux kernels."
Most of the values for options given to the uname command come from a
call to uname(). The "-i" and "-p" options, though, are not defined in
POSIX (and so aren't portable). Some systems, especially BSD, provide
additional, separate information for these concepts of "hardware
architecture" or "processor type", and print these values obtained
from a special system call, either sysinfo() or sysctl(). Linux,
however, does not offer the BSD-style sysinfo() (it has an entirely
different system call named sysinfo()); and it does not offer a value
for the HW_MODEL or HW_MACHINE_ARCH in sysctl().
So, these options are extensions, provided to take advantage of some
more-or-less BSD-specific features. Rather than just give an error
when these options are used on OSses that don't support them, as they
could have done, they opted to have them print "unknown" instead.
The "-m" option, on the other hand, is extremely portable, and may be
depended upon to give reliable results.
