So you inherit a box running linux and you have no idea which flavor of linux it is. How do you find out?
If all you need the kernel version you can try
uname -a
This outputs something like this
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.4.20-31.9 #1 Tue Apr 13 18:04:23 EDT 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
If you need the actual distro name you can try
cat /etc/*release
In Ubuntu it shows up as
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=9.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=jaunty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION=\”Ubuntu 9.04\”
Or even
cat /etc/issue
which spits out the following on Ubuntu
Ubuntu 9.04 \\n \\l
You can combine all three to get the following
uname -a && cat /etc/*release && cat /etc/issue
Update:
Another one to add to the list
cat /proc/version
