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Detecting Underlying Linux Distro

Novell Cool Solutions: Feature
By Arun Singh

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Posted: 11 Oct 2004 		 

Arun Singh
Senior Software Engineer
Novell Developer Services

If you are the owner of the system, then you know which Linux is installed and running. This article will help you to understand how to determine which Linux distribution is installed. You can incorporate this into your application to detect Linux distro.

System Command: uname

Most of the Linux systems provide uname to detect system released information.

Release Information File

Most of the Linux distributions maintain release information file in an/etc/directory. Here is the list of files on some of the well known Linux 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
UnitedLinux /etc/UnitedLinux-release
ubuntu /etc/lsb-release

Sample Script

Using system command uname and contents of the release files you can write scripts of programs to help your software to detect distribution.

#!/bin/sh
# Detects which OS and if it is Linux then it will detect which Linux Distribution.

OS=`uname -s`
REV=`uname -r`
MACH=`uname -m`

GetVersionFromFile()
{
	VERSION=`cat $1 | tr "\n" ' ' | sed s/.*VERSION.*=\ // `
}

if [ "${OS}" = "SunOS" ] ; then
	OS=Solaris
	ARCH=`uname -p`	
	OSSTR="${OS} ${REV}(${ARCH} `uname -v`)"
elif [ "${OS}" = "AIX" ] ; then
	OSSTR="${OS} `oslevel` (`oslevel -r`)"
elif [ "${OS}" = "Linux" ] ; then
	KERNEL=`uname -r`
	if [ -f /etc/redhat-release ] ; then
		DIST='RedHat'
		PSUEDONAME=`cat /etc/redhat-release | sed s/.*\(// | sed s/\)//`
		REV=`cat /etc/redhat-release | sed s/.*release\ // | sed s/\ .*//`
	elif [ -f /etc/SUSE-release ] ; then
		DIST=`cat /etc/SUSE-release | tr "\n" ' '| sed s/VERSION.*//`
		REV=`cat /etc/SUSE-release | tr "\n" ' ' | sed s/.*=\ //`
	elif [ -f /etc/mandrake-release ] ; then
		DIST='Mandrake'
		PSUEDONAME=`cat /etc/mandrake-release | sed s/.*\(// | sed s/\)//`
		REV=`cat /etc/mandrake-release | sed s/.*release\ // | sed s/\ .*//`
	elif [ -f /etc/debian_version ] ; then
		DIST="Debian `cat /etc/debian_version`"
		REV=""

	fi
	if [ -f /etc/UnitedLinux-release ] ; then
		DIST="${DIST}[`cat /etc/UnitedLinux-release | tr "\n" ' ' | sed s/VERSION.*//`]"
	fi
	
	OSSTR="${OS} ${DIST} ${REV}(${PSUEDONAME} ${KERNEL} ${MACH})"

fi


echo ${OSSTR}

Sample Program

Using system command uname and contents of the release files you can write your own program to detect the OS or which Linux distribution is installed. You can refer to this page to get started.

Conclusion

With the help of system command uname and release file you can make your application smarter in detecting the Linux Distribution.


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