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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting How to know which Linux Distribution i am using ? Post 302211858 by nobo on Friday 4th of July 2008 07:24:51 PM
Old 07-04-2008
whichNix

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. Smilie
Code:
#! /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

 

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UPDATE-MANAGER(8)                                             System Manager's Manual                                            UPDATE-MANAGER(8)

NAME
update-manager - graphical management of software packages updates SYNOPSIS
update-manager [options] DESCRIPTION
Update-manager is a frontend for the apt package management system. It allows you to perform some actions of the command line tool apt-get in a graphical environment. Update-manager is especially designed for upgrading your system, or migrating your system towards a more recent version. OPTIONS
For a daily use, you may launch update-manager with no options so that your system is just upgraded. For migration purposes, update-manager accepts some options: -h, --help Show a similar help message -c, --check-dist-upgrades Check if a new distribution release is available -d, --devel-release Check if upgrading to the latest devel release is possible -p, --proposed Try to run a dist-upgrade --dist-upgrade Try to run a dist-upgrade ACTIONS PERFORMED DURING AN UPGRADE TO A NEW VERSION
* eventually reinstall the package ubuntu-desktop * switch to an updated sources.list entries * adds the default user to new groups if needed SEE ALSO
Synaptic, sources.list, aptitude AUTHORS
update-manager was developed by Michael Vogt <mvo@ubuntu.com> with various contributors (see AUTHORS file) This manual page was originally written by Bruno Mangin and Michael Vogt <mvo@ubuntu.com>. COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2006-2007 Canonical There is NO warranty. You may redistribute this software under the terms of the GNU General Public License. For more information about these matters, see the files named COPYING. August 2, 2007 UPDATE-MANAGER(8)
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