Version & Distribution identification

Matt Taggart taggart at rascal.fc.hp.com
Tue Apr 25 16:21:05 PDT 2000


Lenz Grimmer writes...

BTW- Debian uses /etc/debian_version and also updates /etc/issue

 >I guess naming it "linux-release" could be confused with the version
 >number of the linux kernel. What about /etc/distribution-release ?
 >
 >Some fields that could be part of this file:
 >
 >VENDOR : the Linux Distributor, e.g. Caldera, Debian, Red Hat, SuSE,
 >         Turbo Linux, etc.

VENDOR sounds kind of commercial. How about "DISTRIBUTOR" or something?

 >NAME:    the distribution name (e.g. TurboCluster Server, OpenLinux
 >         eServer, SuSE IMAP Server)

When Debian implements "flavors" those could go in this field.

 >VERSION: the distribution version

Distributors will want their version numbers to sort properly so people can 
test against them. For example,

if DISTRIBUTION = "Redhat" and VERSION >= "6.1"

so it might be useful to have guidelines for version numbering.

 >ARCH:    the hardware architecture, e.g. i386, alpha, PPC (not sure, if
 >         this is useful)

uname -m

However this field maybe useful if you are installing to a chroot.


Stuart Anderson writes...

 >Using a format such as
 >
 >FOO="bar"
 >
 >would allow scripts to source this file to gain access to the info while
 >remaining easy to parse from a program.

and you could source it from a shell script.

-- 
Matt Taggart
taggart at fc.hp.com




More information about the lsb-discuss mailing list