Hi,

I am working on a Unix console.
I want to obtain the Linux distribution details in
1) Shell
2) C program ( System call )
Want to know if it is REDHAT / SUSE / UBUNTU , etc ..

Please let me know if there is any way to achieve this.

Thanks in advance,
Siva.

With the uname command? Read the man page of uname.

Regards

with uname command I can get only
Linux <kernel version> <time>
not the distribution details.

How ever referring to some manuals i received that /proc/version
gives the distribution details.

But not sure about the system call which helps to obtain these details
( details obtained from /proc ) into the C program. any help on this ?

You can open and read it as a regular file and parse the desired fields in your program.
An alternative is to use popen and print the desired fields with cut or with awk.

Regards

Not sure if this helps, but cat /etc/issue. That will usually show the human readable version.

if file /etc/SuSE-release exists
It is a SuSE and it contains the version information

if file /etc/redhat-release exists
It is a RedHat box and contains the version information

I am not sure how to do that on Ubuntu other than /etc/issue. I don't think Ubuntu comes with /etc/ubuntu-release file.

-Aby

Hi All,

Thx for the information.
1) In few Linux machines uname -a fails to give the details of Linux Distribution ( eg: Ubuntu)
2) I think any one can alter the /etc/issue file and is not safe to access it always.

I digged more and found this.
cat /proc/version
it output same info as uname -a , but with additional info on the Linux Distribution.

Thx,
Siva.