I'd like to be able to detect which particular Linux flavor is installed on a computer, e.g. Ubuntu vs Fedora, via a command line command.
Some people recommend uname -a, but that only reports the kernel version.
Try the below command....
It worked for me...
cat /proc/version
Once you know that you are running Red Hat for example, you can get to the point with:
cat /etc/redhat-release
Or on Debian:
cat /etc/debian_version
or in general :
cat /etc/*-release
Also you could use the following command
cat /etc/issue
For displaying details including release and codename of the distro
lsb_release -a
You can try:
echo $(lsb_release -si)
Try hostnamectl. It lists the operating system, CPE OS Name, Kernel, Architecture, etc.
Related
I have a dash shell installed as /bin/dash. I checked the manual of dash, which is the same as the POSIX shell manual, and there is nothing there to tell the version of the shell.
dash --version
does not work.
How to tell the version number of dash I have??
Added: some people are pointing me to Ubuntu commands, well, no I am not running Ubuntu, I am running Centos.
dpkg -s
Run the following command:
dpkg -s dash
On systems like Centos that use rpm:
rpm -q dash
I run a debian 7. When I launch
cat /etc/debian_version
I have
7.7
and when I launch
cat /etc/issue
the response is
Debian GNU/Linux 7.6
Do I run 7.7 or 7.6?
Try to use:
lsb_release -a
or
cat /etc/lsb-release
Try to use
cat /etc/debian_version
or
lsb_release -a
What is the best-practiced way to get an unique machine ID in GNU/Linux for i386 architecture?
Are there any good ways except the mac address?
Depending on your kernel, the DMI information may be available via sysfs.
Try those:
# cat /sys/class/dmi/id/board_serial
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
# cat /sys/class/dmi/id/product_uuid
xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
or using a tool
# dmidecode -s baseboard-serial-number
...
# dmidecode -s system-uuid
...
On modern machines with systemd: machine id is created by systemd-machine-id-setup. The location of machine id is documented - in freedesktop machine-id and man machine-id and machine id has a more standardized format - see RFC4122. Just:
cat /etc/machine-id
You can use lshal. This needs hal (apt-get install hal or yum install hal) to be installed first. This way you can access all the info of dmidecode without root permissions.
A non-root equivalent of
# dmidecode | grep -i uuid
will be
$ lshal |grep -i system.hardware.uuid
And similarly other info as per your needs.
A simple and portable way of computing your own sysid may be to serialize uname(), gethostid() and some inodes like /home or your application homedir (obtained with stat()) etc. in a string and hash It.
Closed. This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it's on-topic for Stack Overflow.
Closed 13 years ago.
Improve this question
Moved to https://superuser.com/questions/80251/how-to-know-which-linux-distribution-im-using
How to know which Linux Distribution I'm using?
uname -a gives
Linux xxxxxx.net 2.6.9-42.0.3.EL.wh1smp #1 SMP Fri Aug 14 15:48:17 MDT 2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
How can I know this is Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora or Redhat?
I uses /etc/init.d/serviced restart for restarting serevices, seems it is not Redhat family
Update:
[~]$ cat /etc/issue
cat: /etc/issue: No such file or directory
[~]$ cat /etc/issue.net
cat: /etc/issue.net: No such file or directory
[~]$ lsb_release -a
-sh: lsb_release: command not found
[~]$ cat /etc/*-release
cat: /etc/*-release: No such file or directory
[~]$ cat /etc/*-version
cat: /etc/*-version: No such file or directory
[~]$ cat /etc/*release
cat: /etc/*release: No such file or directory
[~]$ cat /etc/*_release
cat: /etc/*_release: No such file or directory
[~]$ cat /etc/*version
cat: /etc/*version: No such file or directory
[~]$
Try this:
cat /etc/*-release
You could also try /etc/*-version
If you have lsb_release command,
lsb_release -a
will tell you (or just use lsb_release -i).
lsb_release is in Linux Standard Base Core Specification.
Edit: Looks like you're on a Red Hat system. A google search on your uname output suggests so. This is not programmatic, of course!
/etc/issue or /etc/issue.net give a good clue. Newer distros provide /etc/lsb-release which make it easier to determine exact strings progmatically, i.e. distro name / major & minor release / web site, etc.
In the absence of /etc/lsb-release, its much more difficult, hence the creation of lsb-release.
As Alok said, it looks like you are on a rather ancient (or extremely sparse) system. I don't think this is a case that you can (reliably) progmatically determine with a few lines of code.
If all else fails, check to see what kind of package manager is in use (apt / rpm / others), check to see if /etc/init.d is a symlink (rpm / RH distros) or a directory (debian based distros) .. and you have a pretty good clue as to what you can expect to be present in the root file system as far as structure.
You can't please everyone :)
Seems like here's some info:
> cat /etc/issue
Welcome to SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 (i586) - Kernel \r (\l).
> uname -a
Linux boxname 2.6.5-7.244-smp #1 SMP Mon Dec 12 18:32:25 UTC 2005 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
> cat /etc/*-release
SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 (i586)
VERSION = 9
PATCHLEVEL = 3
A list the release filenames for the most common distros:
Release files
And a function that might help you:
Shell script
EL stands for Enterprise Linux in this case, so I think RedHat or a clone (like CentOS). I don't know a good way to programatically find out what distro you're on; there's a few different clues for each one.
cat /etc/redhat_release
cat /etc/debian_version
is a good start. (Note the Ubuntu doesn't modify /etc/debian_version when they pull changes from Debian, so my Ubuntu Karmic system has squeeze/sid in debian_version.)
Edit: forgot about lsb. Good call, Tim Post and Alok. The whole point of LSB is to give distro-independent ways to do things.
sudo find /etc | xargs grep -i fedora > searchFedora
gives:
/etc/netplug.d/netplug: # At least on Fedora Core 1
...
But see the Fedora version in the /etc/netplug.d/netplug file. Is it serious?
cat /etc/issue
Or cat /etc/fedora-release as suggested by #Bruce ONeel
You can also try /etc/redhat-release or /etc/fedora-release:
cat /etc/fedora-release
Fedora release 7 (Moonshine)
The proposed standard file is /etc/os-release. See http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/os-release.html
You can execute something like:
$ source /etc/os-release
$ echo $ID
fedora
$ echo $VERSION_ID
17
$ echo $VERSION
17 (Beefy Miracle)
The simplest command which can give you what you need but some other good info too is:
hostnamectl
You could try
lsb_release -a
which works on at least Debian and Ubuntu (and since it's LSB, it should surely be on most of the other mainstream distros at least). http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/sourceforge/l/ls/lsb/lsb_release-1.0-1.i386.html suggests it's been around quite a while.
cat /etc/*release
It's universal for almost any major distribution.
[Belmiro#HP-550 ~]$ uname -a
Linux HP-550 2.6.30.10-105.2.23.fc11.x86_64 #1 SMP Thu Feb 11 07:06:34 UTC 2010
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[Belmiro#HP-550 ~]$ lsb_release -a
LSB Version: :core-3.1-amd64:core-3.1-noarch:core-3.2-amd64:core-3.2-noarch:deskt
op-3.1-amd64:desktop-3.1-noarch:desktop-3.2-amd64:desktop-3.2-noarch
Distributor ID: Fedora
Description: Fedora release 11 (Leonidas)
Release: 11
Codename: Leonidas
[Belmiro#HP-550 ~]$
These commands worked for Artik 10 :
cat /etc/fedora-release
cat /etc/issue
hostnamectl
and these others didn't :
lsb_release -a
uname -a
What about uname -a ?
On my installation of Fedora 25 (workstation) all of the distribution ID info was found in this file:
/usr/lib/os.release.d/os-release-workstation
This included,
NAME=Fedora
VERSION="25 (Workstation Edition)"
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=25
PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 25 (Workstation Edition)"
<...>
VARIANT="Workstation Edition"
VARIANT_ID=workstation
You can simply run this command to get the version number:
rpm -E %fedora
output:
uname -a works with my fc11
use commmand , screenfetch
output format info.