How to get Linux distribution name and version?
You might want to edit the title to make it clear the question is about doing it from C source, not as a script writer or user at the command line.
@Kolob Those were most emphatically not «more sensible» for this question; I have rolled back your change.
9 Answers 9
+1 this finally was «standardized» among the distro’s. Go back far enough though and this file doesn’t exist, instead each distro put their own file like /etc/redhat-release.
This will only work on LSB compliant Linux distributions, but is not guaranteed to work on non-compliant distributions. OTOH, it will also work on other LSB compliant non-Linux Unices. E.g. I’m pretty sure it won’t work on Adroid.
Note that on e.g. Gentoo Linux lsb_release is not always present by default. I just checked, and it’s provided by an optional package sys-apps/lsb-release, currently not installed on my system.
Will lsb-release works on all the follow Distrubtions?: Debian / Ubuntu | Red Hat Enterprise / Fedora Linux / Suse Linux / Cent OS ?
on my system yields the following from the bash (terminal) prompt:
Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS 2.6.32-41-generic x86_64 I believe uname -mr returns the version of the Linux Kernel, so ‘lsb_release -ds’ should be all you need for the release name and version, assuming the description format is consistent across releases. Thanks, I was wondering how you were supposed to use the short parameter, I was trying it ‘lsb_release -s’ and was wondering why it was failing. Cheers!
trying this way is an interesting one and less restrictive than lsb-release.
This is the best answer, to only retrieve the name of the distro one can do: cat /etc/*-release | grep ID | head -n1 | cut -d ‘=’ -f2
What’s the purpose of getting that information?
If you’re trying to detect some features or properties of the system (e.g. does it support some syscall or does it have some library), instead of relying on output of lsb_release you should either:
- try to use given features and fail gracefully (e.g. dlopen for libraries, syscall(2) for syscalls and so on)
- make it a part of your ./configure check if applicable (standard FOSS way of automatically recognizing system features/properties)
Note that the first way above applies even if your software is binary-only.
dl = dlopen(module_path, RTLD_LAZY); if (!dl) < fprintf(stderr, "Failed to open module: %s\n", module_path); return; >funcptr = dlsym(dl, module_function); if (!funcptr) < fprintf(stderr, "Failed to find symbol: %s\n", module_function); return; >funcptr(); dlclose(dl); 5 Linux Commands to Check Distro Name and Version
When working with an unknown server, the first task of a sys admin is to gather some information about the system, like what OS is it running, what version, what services are running and so on.
And there is no single command that can detect distribution specific information consistently across all linux distributions.
The command is different across Debian, CentOS and ArchLinux.
So in this post we are listing out some common commands that are used to detect distro specific information on linux. This includes the distro name and version.
1. lsb_release
The lsb_release command prints out distribution specific information about a linux distro.
On Ubuntu/debian based systems the command is available by default.
$ lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 11.04 Release: 11.04 Codename: natty
The lsb_release command is also available on CentOS/Fedora based systems, if the lsb core packages are installed.
# lsb_release -a LSB Version: :base-4.0-amd64:base-4.0-noarch:core-4.0-amd64:core-4.0-noarch:graphics-4.0-amd64:graphics-4.0-noarch:printing-4.0-amd64:printing-4.0-noarch Distributor ID: CentOS Description: CentOS release 6.4 (Final) Release: 6.4 Codename: Final
2. /etc/*-release files
The /etc directory contains a couple of files that contains information about the distribution. The following files are present on Ubuntu/Debian based systems.
/etc/issue /etc/issue.net /etc/lsb-release /etc/os-release
$ cat /etc/issue Ubuntu 13.10 \n \l
$ cat /etc/issue.net Ubuntu 13.10
$ cat /etc/lsb-release DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=13.10 DISTRIB_CODENAME=saucy DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 13.10"
$ cat /etc/os-release NAME="Ubuntu" VERSION="13.10, Saucy Salamander" ID=ubuntu ID_LIKE=debian PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 13.10" VERSION_ID="13.10" HOME_URL="http://www.ubuntu.com/" SUPPORT_URL="http://help.ubuntu.com/" BUG_REPORT_URL="http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
The file os-release contains a whole lot of information about the system.
CentOS/Fedora based systems contain similar files but with different names.
/etc/centos-release /etc/lsb-release /etc/redhat-release /etc/system-release
# cat /etc/centos-release CentOS release 6.4 (Final)
# cat /etc/lsb-release LSB_VERSION=base-4.0-amd64:base-4.0-noarch:core-4.0-amd64:core-4.0-noarch:graphics-4.0-amd64:graphics-4.0-noarch:printing-4.0-amd64:printing-4.0-noarch
# cat /etc/redhat-release CentOS release 6.4 (Final)
# cat /etc/system-release CentOS release 6.4 (Final)
Note that the lsb specific command and files are not present on CentOS by default. The redhat-lsb-core packages have to be installed to make lsb available. The /etc/lsb-release file does not print the distro information in a simple format.
Fedora contains the /etc/os-release file, similar to ubuntu
$ cat /etc/os-release NAME=Fedora VERSION="18 (Spherical Cow)" ID=fedora VERSION_ID=18 PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 18 (Spherical Cow)" ANSI_COLOR="0;34" CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:18"
3. cat /proc/version
The /proc/version file contains information about the kernel and some indication about the distro.
On a typical Ubuntu system the contents look like this
$ cat /proc/version Linux version 2.6.38-13-generic ([email protected]) (gcc version 4.5.2 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.5.2-8ubuntu4) ) #52-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 8 16:53:51 UTC 2011
On a typical CentOS system the output looks as follows
# cat /proc/version Linux version 2.6.32-358.11.1.el6.x86_64 ([email protected]) (gcc version 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-3) (GCC) ) #1 SMP Wed Jun 12 03:34:52 UTC 2013
As can be seen above, the version information about the distro is not very clear, although it might be possible to deduce the distro in use.
Output on a RHEL 5 system
# cat /proc/version Linux version 2.6.18-028stab070.14 ([email protected]) (gcc version 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-46)) #1 SMP Thu Nov 18 16:04:02 MSK 2010
4. uname -a
The uname command can also indicate which linux distro is in use, but gives very little information about it.
On Ubuntu, uname can clearly indicate the distribution name.
$ uname -a Linux enlightened-desktop 2.6.38-13-generic #52-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 8 16:53:51 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
However on CentOS, the exact distro name is not revealed.
# uname -a Linux dhcppc3 2.6.32-358.11.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Jun 12 03:34:52 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Instead it reports the base distro name EL (Redhat).
Portable command
The following is an attempt to get a portable command for checking distro info across different linux systems.
$ cat /etc/[A-Za-z]*[_-][rv]e[lr]* squeeze/sid DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=11.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=natty DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 11.04"
A simpler approach to make a portable command would be like this
$ lsb_release -a || cat /etc/redhat-release || cat /etc/*-release || cat /etc/issue
If one option fails, the command moves to the next one, until one of them works. The above command is not a well tested one and is expected to work fine only on ubuntu/debian and centos/fedora based systems.
That would print all unique lines from all /etc/*-release files. Works well on most distros.
A Tech Enthusiast, Blogger, Linux Fan and a Software Developer. Writes about Computer hardware, Linux and Open Source software and coding in Python, Php and Javascript. He can be reached at [email protected] .
One Comment
- Tony August 10, 2021 at 10:10 pm Hi, Nice article.
I personaly use this command in one of my scripts: (lsb_release -a 2>/dev/null || cat /etc/redhat-release || cat /etc/*-release || cat /etc/issue) | grep -i “centos\|ubuntu\|red *hat\|fedora\|debian\|slackware\|suse\|arch\|deepin\|kubuntu\|alpine” -o | sort -f | uniq -i -u It’s not getting all the Distributions out there, but enough for my use. Cheers,
Tony
How do I identify which Linux distro is running? [duplicate]
We have some new hardware in our office which runs its own customized Linux OS. How do I go about figuring which distro it’s based on?
3 Answers 3
A question very close to this one was posted on Unix.Stackexchange HERE Giles has a pretty complete | cool answer for the ways he describes.
# cat /proc/version Linux version 2.6.32-71.el6.x86_64 (mockbuild@c6b6.centos.org) (gcc version 4.4.4 20100726 (Red Hat 4.4.4-13) (GCC) ) #1 SMP Fri May 20 03:51:51 BST 2011 # uname -a Linux system1.doofus.local 2.6.32-71.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri May 20 03:51:51 BST 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
# cat /etc/issue CentOS Linux release 6.0 (Final) Kernel \r on an \m cat /proc/config.gz cat /usr/src/linux/config.gz cat /boot/config*
Though I did some checking and this was not very reliable except on SUSE.
# zcat /proc/config.gz | grep -i kernel CONFIG_SUSE_KERNEL=y # CONFIG_KERNEL_DESKTOP is not set CONFIG_LOCK_KERNEL=y
- Novell SuSE—> /etc/SuSE-release
- Red Hat—>/etc/redhat-release, /etc/redhat_version
- Fedora—>/etc/fedora-release
- Slackware—>/etc/slackware-release, /etc/slackware-version
- Old Debian—>/etc/debian_release, /etc/debian_version
- New Debian—>/etc/os-release
- Mandrake—>/etc/mandrake-release
- Yellow dog—>/etc/yellowdog-release
- Sun JDS—>/etc/sun-release
- Solaris/Sparc—>/etc/release
- Gentoo—>/etc/gentoo-release
There is also a bash script at the Unix.com link someone wrote to automate checking.
Figuring out what package manager you have is a good clue.
rpm yum apt-get zypper +many more
Though this is by no means foolproof as the vendor could use anything they want. It really just gives you a place to start.
# dmesg | less Linux version 2.6.32.12-0.7-default (geeko@buildhost) (gcc version 4.3.4 [gcc-4_3-branch revision 152973] (SUSE Linux) ) #1 SMP 2010-05-20 11:14:20 +0200
pretty much the same information as cat /proc/version & uname