CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexlinuxbashshelloperating-system
Pratik Patil
Pratik Patil

Reputation: 3753

How to find Linux Distribution name using shell script?

I am writing a shell script in which I need the current operating system name to make it generic. Like:

if [ $Operating_System == "CentOS" ]
then
    echo "CentOS";
    # Do this
elif [ $Operating_System == "Ubuntu" ]
then
    echo "Ubuntu";
    # Do that
else
    echo "Unsupported Operating System";
fi

How will it be possible? Applying regular expression on lsb_release -a command or something else?

Thanks..

Upvotes: 11

Views: 14230

Answers (7)

Filippo Lauria
Filippo Lauria

Reputation: 2064

EDIT 2: As pointed out by @Jean-Michaël Celerier, some distros prefer to add double quotes.

This example...

awk -F'=' '/^ID=/ { gsub("\"","",$2); print tolower($2) }' /etc/*-release 2> /dev/null

... and this one ...

(awk -F'=' '/^ID=/ { print tolower($2) }' /etc/*-release | tr -d '"') 2> /dev/null

... can be used to remove them.

EDIT 1: as suggested by @S0AndS0, this is slightly better:

awk -F'=' '/^ID=/ {print tolower($2)}' /etc/*-release 2> /dev/null

try this one:

awk '/^ID=/' /etc/*-release | awk -F'=' '{ print tolower($2) }'

Upvotes: 4

biscoito
biscoito

Reputation: 1

Here is what i get:

#!/bin/bash

dist=$(tr -s ' \011' '\012' < /etc/issue | head -n 1)

check_arch=$(uname -m)

echo "[$green+$txtrst] Distribution Name: $dist"

Upvotes: 0

Brian Showalter
Brian Showalter

Reputation: 4349

DISTRO=$( cat /etc/*-release | tr [:upper:] [:lower:] | grep -Poi '(debian|ubuntu|red hat|centos|nameyourdistro)' | uniq )
if [ -z $DISTRO ]; then
    DISTRO='unknown'
fi
echo "Detected Linux distribution: $DISTRO"

Upvotes: 3

Jahid
Jahid

Reputation: 22428

You can get the info from lsb_release:

echo "$(lsb_release -is)"

i stands for distributor id.

s stands for short.

For ex. It shows Ubuntu instead of Distributor Id: Ubuntu

There are other options:

-r : release

-d : description

-c : codename

-a : all

You can get this information by running lsb_release --help or man lsb_release

Upvotes: 8

mrflash818
mrflash818

Reputation: 934

I'd use uname -a

robert@debian:/tmp$ uname -a
Linux debian 3.2.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.2.65-1+deb7u2 i686 GNU/Linux

Upvotes: -3

qwertyboy
qwertyboy

Reputation: 1636

For almost all linux distros, cat /etc/issue will do the trick.

Edit: Obviously, no solution can apply to all distros, as distros are free to do as they please.

Further clarification: This is not guaranteed to work - nothing is - but in my experience, this is the method that most often works. Actually, it's the only method that works consistently (lsb_release, which was mentioned here, often produces command not found).

Upvotes: 1

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

Reputation: 798446

$ lsb_release -i
Distributor ID: Fedora
$ lsb_release -i | cut -f 2-
Fedora

Upvotes: 10

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