Is there a way to determine what version (distribution & kernel version, I suppose) of Linux is running (from the command-line), that works on any Linux system?
I know uname -a or /proc/version Is any other command to know the Linux version???? When we telnet to any of the Linux server, the version shows very clearly like Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 3 (Taroon. (1 Reply) Discussion started by: bachegowda. Hi all, a stupid question about a command to check the Solaris Version, I'm working on Solaris 10 and I need to check that the Version is ' 10 ' with a UNIX command. I just used ' uname -a ' command but I had this result: SunOS dev510 5.10 Generic118833-36 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-4 so. To see the version of Oracle Solaris software that is running on your system, type either of the following commands. $ uname -a The cat command provides more detailed information. $ cat /etc/release. Symantec helps consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. The Symantec Connect community allows customers and users of Symantec to network and learn more about creative and innovative ways to. Jan 07, 2018 I am a new Linux system user. How do I check os version in linux command line? Linux is a free and open source operating system. There are many variants of Linux out there. They are typically called Linux distribution. Suse, OpenSUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Arch, Fedora, RHEL all are common Linux. Is there a way to determine what version (distribution & kernel version, I suppose) of Linux is running (from the command-line), that works on any Linux system?
Breakthrough9 Answers
The kernel is universally detected with uname
:
There really isn't a cross-distribution way to determine what distribution and version you're on. There have been attempts to make this consistent, but ultimately it varies, unfortunately. LSB tools provide this information, but ironically aren't installed by default everywhere. Example on an Ubuntu 9.04 system with the lsb-release
package installed:
Otherwise, the closest widely-available method is checking /etc/something-release
files. These exist on most of the common platforms, and on their derivatives (i.e., Red Hat and CentOS).
Here are some examples.
Ubuntu has /etc/lsb-release
:
But Debian has /etc/debian_version
:
Fedora, Red Hat and CentOS have:
Gentoo:
I don't have a SUSE system available at the moment, but I believe it is /etc/SuSE-release
.
Slackware has /etc/slackware-release
and/or /etc/slackware-version
.
Mandriva has /etc/mandriva-release
.
For most of the popular distributions then,
will most often work. Stripped down and barebones 'server' installations might not have the 'release' package for the distribution installed.
Additionally, two 3rd party programs you can use to automatically get this information are Ohai and Facter.
Note that many distributions have this kind of information in /etc/issue
or /etc/motd
, but some security policies and best practices indicate that these files should contain access notification banners.
Related:How to find out version of software package installed on the node?,puppet.
Find Solaris Version Command
You could also try:
It usually (not always, though) will tell you what distribution you are using. /etc/issue
is the file used for the login screen.
at a minimum for Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSUSE.
Does not work for OS X at least until 10.9 (Mavericks). Use sw_vers instead.
OpenSUSE had cat /etc/SuSE-release up until 13.1 but is deprecated in favour of os-release.
Redhat 6.1 has cat /etc/redhat-release
cat /proc/version
found me Red Hat on a shared VPS.
Kernel: uname -r
Distro: lsb_release -a
These will run on most Linux systems
This issue can also be solved using Python with the platform
module:
Using platform()
function:
Solaris Version Command
The above command returns a single string identifying the underlying platform with as much useful information as possible.
Or using uname()
function:
The above command returns a namedtuple()
containing six attributes: system
, node
, release
, version
, machine
, and processor
.
Or using dist()
function:
The last command tries to determine the name of the Linux OS distribution name, but it is deprecated since Python 3.5 and will be removed in Python 3.8.
protected by BinaryMisfitDec 20 '10 at 14:27
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