What version of RHEL am I using?

Question

From the shell and without root privileges, how can I determine what Red Hat Enterprise Linux version I'm running?

Ideally, I'd like to get both the major and minor release version, for example RHEL 4.0 or RHEL 5.1, etc.

Answer 1

You can use the lsb_release command on various Linux distributions:

lsb_release -i -r 

This will tell you the Distribution and Version and is a little bit more accurate than accessing files that may or may not have been modified by the admin or a software package. As well as working across multiple distros.

For RHEL, you should use:

cat /etc/redhat-release

Answer 2

You can look at the contents of /etc/redhat-release, which will look something like this:

$ cat /etc/redhat-release 
CentOS release 5.4 (Final)

The contents are different for an actual RHEL system. This technique works on all RedHat derivatives, including CentOS, Fedora, and others.

Answer 3

I prefer to use the /etc/issue file.

$ cat /etc/issue

I've seen many situations where /etc/redhat-release has been modified to meet software compatibility requirements (Dell or HP's management agents, for instance).

Answer 4

The most reliable way when lsb_release is not installed is:

# rpm -q --queryformat '%{VERSION}' redhat-release-server
6Server

# rpm -q --queryformat '%{RELEASE}' redhat-release-server
6.4.0.4.el6

On minimal installs, lsb_release is missing.

To get this working also with Red Hat clones (credit goes to comments):

# rpm -q --queryformat '%{VERSION}' $(rpm -qa '(redhat|sl|slf|centos|oraclelinux)-release(|-server|-workstation|-client|-computenode)')

Or, as a single command (rather than two "rpm"'s being executed):

# rpm -qa --queryformat '%{VERSION}\n' '(redhat|sl|slf|centos|oraclelinux)-release(|-server|-workstation|-client|-computenode)'

Use sed/cut and other text manipulating UNIX tools to get what you want.

Answer 5

Assuming it truly is a Red Hat release (not Centos):

rpm -q redhat-release

Or just run:

uname -r

And map the output. 2.6.9 kernels are RHEL4, 2.6.18 kernels are RHEL5. If necessary, you can map the full version to the specific update releases from Red Hat (i.e. 2.6.9-89 is RHEL5 U4).

Answer 6

I prefer hostnamectl:

$ hostnamectl
   Static hostname: xxxxxx.xxx.xxx
         Icon name: computer-server
           Chassis: server
        Machine ID: 3e3038756eaf4c5c954ec3d24f35b13f
           Boot ID: 958452e0088b4191a4ea676ebc90403b
  Operating System: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.5 (Maipo)
       CPE OS Name: cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7.5:GA:server
            Kernel: Linux 3.10.0-862.3.3.el7.x86_64
      Architecture: x86-64

Answer 7

I quite like using the /etc/os-release file, which is in the release RPM:

# yum whatprovides /etc/os-release 
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks
Determining fastest mirrors
 * base: dl.za.jsdaav.net
 * extras: dl.za.jsdaav.net
 * updates: dl.za.jsdaav.net
centos-release-7-4.1708.el7.centos.x86_64 : CentOS Linux release file
Repo        : base
Matched from:
Filename    : /etc/os-release

centos-release-7-4.1708.el7.centos.x86_64 : CentOS Linux release file
Repo        : @anaconda
Matched from:
Filename    : /etc/os-release

This file can be sourced in scripts, like:

$ source /etc/os-release
$ echo $NAME
CentOS Linux
$ echo $VERSION
7 (Core)

Answer 8

If you want to just get the version numbers the following is about as short and simple as I can get it.

Tested on rhel 6.7, rhel 7.2, debian 8.3 and ubuntu 14.04:

lsb_release -s -r | cut -d '.' -f 1

For a practical example, say you want to test for the distribution major and minor version and do things based on that:

#!/bin/bash

major=$(lsb_release -s -r | cut -d '.' -f 1)
minor=$(lsb_release -s -r | cut -d '.' -f 2)

if (( "$major" >= 7 ))
then
  echo "Do stuff, OS major version is $major"
  echo "OS minor version is $minor"
else
  echo "Do other things"
  echo "Your version is $major.$minor"
fi

Answer 9

A late arrival to this, but I had fun trying to figure out the RHEL version on several remote nodes. So, if you have a batch of servers that use the same password (I know, I know...) here is a quick and dirty to check the RedHat version:

Create an expect script

vim server-version.sh

Expect script to check major RedHat version on multiple remote hosts

#!/usr/bin/expect
log_user 0
spawn ssh -l root [lindex $argv 0]
expect "assword:"
send "sUp3rS3cr3tP4ssW0rd^\r"
expect "# "
log_user 1
send "cat /etc/redhat-release\r"
expect "*#"
log_user 0
send "exit\n"

Run the script for all your nodes

[root@home ~]#
for server in server1 server2 server3 server4 server5; do echo -e "$server: \c"; /root/server-version.sh $server; echo; echo; done;

Output

server1: cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.3 (Maipo)
[root@server1 ~]#

server2: cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.3 (Maipo)
[root@server2 ~]#

...