How to know which Linux Distribution i am using ?

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

I m working on many Linux servers in my project. But i am unable to know which Linux Distribution i am using Like whether i am using SUSE or REDHAT or MONDRAKE. I tried with "uname" command. But it does not help me. Please provide me the command if u know.

Regards,
Basavaraja KC

2

have you typed "uname -a" ? i can see what darwin im using... :confused:

3

already tried with uname -a

But its giving only "Linux", not which distribution of Linux.

Please any body help on this.

4

try

cat /etc/issue

Following are the info files for different distributions:

Novell SuSE---> /etc/SuSE-release 
Red Hat--->/etc/redhat-release, /etc/redhat_version
Fedora-->/etc/fedora-release
Slackware--->/etc/slackware-release, /etc/slackware-version
Debian--->/etc/debian_release, /etc/debian_version
Mandrake--->/etc/mandrake-release
Yellow dog-->/etc/yellowdog-release
Sun JDS--->/etc/sun-release 
Solaris/Sparc--->/etc/release 
Gentoo--->/etc/gentoo-release

Regards,
Tayyab

5

An alternative way... i found by luck this file. here u can see the distribution but i dont know if its on all systems. At least its in Debian...

/proc/version

anyone ones if this file is a linux standard? because Darwin doesnt use /proc.
thx

6

Found this old thread while researching. I come up against this problem often in a very heterogeneous network I admin. Barring us deploying Puppet or a similar solution (someday), I need a fix. There is no canonical way to determine distro so this script is a hack around. It works (gives a best guess) on slack, suse, rh, centOS, ubuntu, solaris, and a couple of other proprietary systems we use.

Comment, suggest, port, test, change, flame. :slight_smile:

#! /bin/bash
# return an awkable string consisting of
#    unix OS type, or
#    Linux dist, or
#    a long guess (based on /proc), or
#    no clue

giveUp () {
   echo "Unknown"
   exit 0
}

# keep this easily awkable, prepending an initial clue
versionGuess () {
   if [ -e /proc/version ]; then
      echo -n "Unsure "
      cat /proc/version
      exit 0
   fi
   return 1
}

# if we have ignition, print and exit
gotDist () {
   [ -n "$1" ] && echo "$1" && exit 0
}

# we are only interested in a single word "dist" here
# various malformations can occur; admin will have to code appropately based on output
linuxRelease () {
   if [ -r /etc/lsb-release ]; then
      dist=$(grep 'DISTRIB_ID' /etc/lsb-release | sed 's/DISTRIB_ID=//' | head -1)
      gotDist "$dist"
   fi

   dist=$(find /etc/ -maxdepth 1 -name '*release' 2> /dev/null | sed 's/\/etc\///' | sed 's/-release//' | head -1)
   gotDist "$dist"

   dist=$(find /etc/ -maxdepth 1 -name '*version' 2> /dev/null | sed 's/\/etc\///' | sed 's/-version//' | head -1)
   gotDist "$dist"

   return 1
}

# start with uname and branch the decision from there
dist=$(uname -s 2> /dev/null)
if [ "$dist" = "Linux" ]; then
   linuxRelease
   versionGuess
   giveUp
elif [ -n "$dist" ]; then
   echo "$dist"
   exit 0
else
   versionGuess
   giveUp
fi

# we shouldn't get here
giveUp
# done