Determine Linux distribution

Question

I am trying to determine what flavor of linux server is running. I am not trying to determine the kernel version - but rater the distributor.

gcc is installed, and in the version output, it says RedHat

# gcc --version
gcc (GCC) 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-11)

Does this mean I can safely assume my server is a RedHat server. Is there a better - 100% bulletproof method to find this out? Also for other linux flavors - not just this server?

Edit: contents of /etc/ in case it helps - but I would like a solution that works for other versions of linux too.

# ls /etc/
./              backupmxhosts  domainusers     host.conf     localdomains  mailips        pam.d/      relayhosts               shadow              trustedmailhosts
../             bashrc*        exim.conf       inputrc       localtime     man.config     passwd      resolv.conf              skipsmtpcheckhosts  userdomains
DIR_COLORS      cron.deny      exim.pl         ld.so.cache   lynx.cfg      mtab           profile     secondarymx              spammeripblocks     vimrc
aliases         demodomains    exim.pl.local*  ld.so.conf    mail/         my.cnf         profile.d/  senderverifybypasshosts  sudoers
antivirus.exim  demouids       group           localaliases  mailhelo      nsswitch.conf  protocols   services                 termcap

I have no *release or *versionfiles in /etc/

# ls /etc*release; ls /etc/*version
/bin/ls: /etc/*release: No such file or directory
/bin/ls: /etc/*version: No such file or directory

I tried LSB

# lsb_release -a
LSB Version:
Distributor ID: n/a
Description:    (none)
Release:        n/a
Codename:       n/a

Also - I guess I am inside a chroot jail (not really sure what that is) which could likely be the cause for this issue.

---

Updated:

I think this does it for me. I think I can safely assume I am using cent-os.

# cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.6.9-103.plus.c4smp ([e-mail]) (gcc version 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-11)) #1 SMP Wed Dec 21 16:17:23 EST 2011

Answer 1

cat /proc/version

Examples:

1. Ubuntu:

   $ cat /proc/version
   Linux version 3.11.0-13-generic (buildd@roseapple) (gcc version 4.8.1 \
   (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.8.1-10ubuntu8) ) #20-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 23 07:38:26 UTC 2013
   

2. Red Hat / CentOS:

   $ cat /proc/version
   Linux version 2.6.32-220.13.1.el6.x86_64 ([e-mail]) \
   (gcc version 4.4.6 20110731 (Red Hat 4.4.6-3) (GCC) ) #1 SMP Tue Apr 17 23:56:34 BST 2012
   

See also How To Know Which Linux Distribution You Are Using?

Answer 2

On most modern Linux distros, the following command will give you its information:

lsb_release -a

Answer 3

/etc/issue might be a good starting point.

More could be found by inspecting the info files for different distributions:

Novell SuSE    /etc/SuSE-release
OpenSuSE       /etc/SuSE-release, /etc/os-release
Red Hat,CentOS /etc/redhat-release, /etc/redhat_version
Fedora         /etc/fedora-release, /etc/redhat-release, /etc/os-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
Amazon Linux   /etc/system-release
PLD Linux      /etc/pld-release, /etc/os-release
ArchLinux      /etc/arch-release, /etc/os-release

See Unix forum for more details.

Answer 4

If /etc/issue is missing, there may be one or more /etc/*_release files.

For example, my Ubuntu system has /etc/lsb-release:

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=11.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=natty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 11.04"

A friend's CentOS system (based on Red Hat) has /etc/redhat-release:

CentOS release 5.6 (Final)

I don't know how universal this is.

Answer 5

cat /etc/issue might answer your question.

The distro makers are not friendly to you here. First, each one thinks it is the only one true way.

Most likely, instead of trying to sniff the distro, you should be looking in more detail at the particular question you actually need to answer. Focus on the functionality you are looking at, not the distro providing it. After all, a new version of a distro can turn around and go in the opposite direction on any particular axis.

Answer 6

Use facter (yes that is how it is spelled).

Facter is a companion to puppet, it provides variables that can be queried which contain information about the system.

For example, here are just a few of the dozens of variables that factor can return

$ facter
...
operatingsystem => CentOS
operatingsystemmajrelease => 6
operatingsystemrelease => 6.4
osfamily => RedHat
...

You could simply query the osfamily fact to see that the server is running RedHat

$ facter osfamily
RedHat

Check out the documentation: http://puppetlabs.com/facter

Answer 7

uname -a

Works always for any Tux

Answer 8

There is no single sure fire way of doing this. I asked a similar question over on unix.se and the best way of getting this info is a script that checks a variety of sources:

#!/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}

The other choice is indeed using gcc --version, since gcc is always compiled for a particular distro, this will be relatively portable. I highly recommend you read the accepted answer on my question at U&L it explains the situation very nicely.

Answer 9

This command worked for Debian based and Redhat based distributions: Using tr filter, you convert the document to one-word-per-line format and then count the first line which contains the distribution name.

tr -s ' \011' '\012' < /etc/issue | head -n 1

Answer 10

Thos is the best method

cat /etc/*release