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Author How to identify distro, lsb-release is broken
Stephen Birch

2006-02-23, 7:54 am

Hi

I need to find a way of identifying the name of an installed
distrobution. This mechanism should be able to differentiate

woody
sarge
etch
sid
hoary
breezy
dapper

Prior to etch I was using lsb-release but it seems /etc/lsb-release is
no longer installed by 'apt-get install lsb-release'. The README.Debian
file provides the following background information:

> Distribution-specific information should be *separately provided* in
> /etc/lsb-release; it is no longer provided in this package. It is my
> hope that in Debian, this will be managed by the base-files
> maintainer (who already maintains the debian_version file).


I don't pretend to understand the reason for this change but I do know
that my identification mechanism is now broken on etch.

Can anyone suggest a more reliable mechanism?

Steve


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Miles Bader

2006-02-23, 7:54 am

Stephen Birch <sgbirch@imsmail.org> writes:
> I need to find a way of identifying the name of an installed
> distrobution. This mechanism should be able to differentiate


To what end? Many people do not run "pure" releases, so the concept of
a distro version is rather shaky at best (especially in debian which
emphasizes fine-grained upgrades).

-Miles
--
Is it true that nothing can be known? If so how do we know this? -Woody Allen


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Stephen Birch

2006-02-23, 7:54 am

Miles Bader(miles.bader@necel.com)@2006-02-23 17:41:
> Stephen Birch <sgbirch@imsmail.org> writes:
>
> To what end? Many people do not run "pure" releases, so the concept of
> a distro version is rather shaky at best (especially in debian which
> emphasizes fine-grained upgrades).


We use apt to distribute internal software used in our organization.

The build dependancies vary slightly for each distro so we simply use
the distro ident when compiling to arrange for the correct tools to be
installed.

Steve


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Hendrik Sattler

2006-02-23, 7:54 am

Am Donnerstag, 23. Februar 2006 10:16 schrieb Stephen Birch:
> Miles Bader(miles.bader@necel.com)@2006-02-23 17:41:
>
> We use apt to distribute internal software used in our organization.
>
> The build dependancies vary slightly for each distro so we simply use
> the distro ident when compiling to arrange for the correct tools to be
> installed.


If you depend on specific versions of libs or tools, why not test those
versions directly? Software like autoconf exists for exactly this purpose.

HS


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Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo

2006-02-23, 7:54 am

On Thu, Feb 23, 2006 at 12:34:00AM -0800, Stephen Birch wrote:
> I don't pretend to understand the reason for this change but I do know
> that my identification mechanism is now broken on etch.
>
> Can anyone suggest a more reliable mechanism?


I think that the most reliable will be checking libc version.

regards
fEnIo

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Carlos C Soto

2006-02-26, 9:51 am

Stephen Birch wrote:
> Hi
>
> I need to find a way of identifying the name of an installed
> distrobution. This mechanism should be able to differentiate
>
> woody
> sarge
> etch
> sid
> hoary
> breezy
> dapper


How about to check/grep/process /etc/debian_version installed by base-files?
$ cat /etc/debian_version
testing/unstable

Does ubuntu has a /etc/ubuntu_version ?

$ apt-file search debian_version
base-files: etc/debian_version

This is only one idea...

Carlos C Soto :: eclipxe


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Reinhard Tartler

2006-02-26, 9:51 am

Carlos C Soto wrote:
> Does ubuntu has a /etc/ubuntu_version ?

yes, it reads 'testing/unstable' for all past releases.

Greetings,
Reinhard



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