[NTLUG:Discuss] What designates what version you're running?

[Burton Strauss]

There's no magic.  Unlike other OSes, what we think of as the 'version' is a
compilation of unrelated things.  There's no central "release number".

For ntop, I've tried to do this (and across different OSes too!), in a file
called "utils/linuxrelease".  Pull it down and laugh at me.  It's good
enough for my purposes, but it basically sucks.


Important things include:

   * Kernel release (but this can be independently updated yet often is not
- the normal up2date skips it)

   * /etc/xxxx-release or /etc/xxxx-version (but these are just text files),
plus various distros use different (other) files, UnitedLinux has their own,
etc.

But you can take this a lot further

   * Version information for some key packages (e.g. gcc 2.95 is RH7.3 (or
is that 7.2 - I never remember))
   * X11 server version
   * Gnome/KDE version

Etc..

This is why RPM-h*ll is actually worse than DLL-H*ll.  W/ RPMs there is not
just a single 'version' to worry about (e.g. the W98 vs. XP version of a
DLL), but instead the versioning on dozens or more of individual packages.

Typically in the RH days, you finished an "upgrade" when you installed the
next RH release versions of all your packages and the redhat-release
package, which is what updated /etc/redhat-release.  Where it gets ugly w/
Fedora:

$ ls /etc/*-release -l
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 33 May 11  2004 /etc/fedora-release
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 14 Aug  2  2004 /etc/redhat-release ->
fedora-release

(Since some RH stuff looks for /etc/redhat-release, the RH->FC update
installs the new file and then a symbolic link).  So if you look for
/etc/redhat-release to decide it's redhat, you call FC1 "RedHat 2".

-----Burton

 
-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at ntlug.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at ntlug.org] On Behalf
Of Wayne Dahl
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2005 12:08 AM
To: NTLUG
Subject: [NTLUG:Discuss] What designates what version you're running?

<snip />

Anyway, here's my question.  After supposedly upgrading to FC1 (and it
appears most of the files on the system are indeed FC1 files), when the
machine is booting the system, just before the graphic login screen comes
up, there is a line saying it's starting Red Hat Linux 9 instead of Fedora
Core 1...and also the login splash screen still shows RH 9 instead of Fedora
Core 1.  So, how does the system actually determine its a Fedora Core or a
Red Hat system???

<snip />

Wayne