How to determine Kernel version

[Richard Welty]

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 23:10:12 -0500 (EST) Richard Welty <rwelty at averillpark.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 22:51:57 -0500 ed <ed at gurski.com> wrote:
> > I was under the impression that the orignal post was to determine which
> > kernel was the currently running kernel.

> i still don't understand why

> $ uname -r

> won't suffice in that case.

i'm going to amend this slightly:

in heterogenous environments, where the systems are generally
unix or unix-like, you may wish to script with

uname -rs

to get identification of the OS.

on a fedora fc1 desktop in my office:

$ uname -rs
Linux 2.4.22-1.2149.nptl

on my rh8.0 laptop:

$ uname -rs
Linux 2.4.18-14

on an OpenBSD 3.3 system in my (basement) lab:

$ uname -rs
OpenBSD 3.3

on the Solaris 8 system in the basement:

$ uname -rs
SunOS 5.8

there is some inconsistency in the implementation of
uname across unix systems, for example on solaris
you might want to add the -v option:

$ uname -rsv
SunOS 5.8 Generic_108528-14

but the -v isn't especially useful on linux.

even with the inconsistency, it's still better than an
rpm hack which only works on a subset of linux
distributions.

richard
-- 
Richard Welty                                         rwelty at averillpark.net
Averill Park Networking                                         518-573-7592
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