Finding out the OS distribution name

[David Arnold]

-->"Marc-Andre" == M -A Lemburg <mal at lemburg.com> writes:

  Marc-Andre> On SuSE Linux there's a file /etc/SuSE-release which
  Marc-Andre> tells me the version etc.

on Debian GNU/Linux the file /etc/debian_version contains the
distribution version number (ie. 2.1 for my local system).

   > cat /etc/debian_version 
   2.1
   > 

on RedHat Linux the file /etc/redhat-release contains the distribution
version number, and its code name, although the format seems to have
changed relatively recently ...

   > cat /etc/redhat-release 
   release 5.0 (Hurricane)
   >

   > cat /etc/redhat-release 
   Red Hat Linux release 5.2 (Apollo)
   >

   > cat /etc/redhat-release 
   Red Hat Linux release 6.0 (Hedwig)
   >


  Marc-Andre> It's a pitty that "uname" doesn't return this
  Marc-Andre> information.

it does get you kernel version which can be useful, especially as
people are reasonably likely to upgrade the kernel within a
distribution.


  Marc-Andre> I was thinking of something similar to the config.guess
  Marc-Andre> shell script included in autoconf. A bit more
  Marc-Andre> simpleminded perhaps but with enough information to be
  Marc-Andre> recognizable by a human :-) I would like to include it
  Marc-Andre> in the mxCGIPython project (see my Python Pages) which
  Marc-Andre> automatically generates a canonical name for the system
  Marc-Andre> where the binary is being compiled on.

that'd be nice.



d