Determine Redhat Linux Version

Question

How do I determine which RedHat Linux version I am running?

Here's what I've read:

• /etc/redhat-release file contains the version, but anybody can tamper with that file.
• people say uname command, but you can install any kernel on Redhat.

If I am running redhat 5.1 and someone upgrade it with 5.2 or 5.x, what determines the version of RedHat?

even lsb_release -a read /etc/redhat-release file.

Answer 1

Try this command:

rpm -qa | grep release

for instance on my machine I get this

redhat-release-workstation-6Workstation-6.4.0.4.el6.x86_64

Answer 2

If "anybody" has root access to your machine to either change /etc/redhat-release or install an alternate kernel you're most probably in bigger trouble than determining the redhat version of your system.

Just use the value pointed out by /etc/redhat-release or even better in terms of portability use the output of lsb_release as this is exactly the purpose they were made for.

With "anybody" being able to do anything with your system there is no other chance at all.

Answer 3

You can use the lsb_release command on recent linux distributions. If you issue:

lsb_release -i -r

Or

uname -r

And map the output. 2.6.9 kernels are RHEL4, 2.6.18 kernels are RHEL5. If necessary, you can map the full version to the specific update releases from Red Hat (ie 2.6.9-89 is RHEL5 U4).

Answer 4

Note: since July 2012 , /etc/os-release should be the standard file where to look for the version of any OS.

• It relieves application developers who just want to know the distribution they are running on to check for a multitude of individual release files.
• It provides both a "pretty" name (ie one to show to the user), and machine parsable version/OS identifiers (ie for use in build systems).
• It is extensible, can easily learn new fields if needed.

See itsman page .

Example for RedHat :

# cat /etc/os-release 
NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server"
VERSION="7.0 (Maipo)"
ID="rhel"
ID_LIKE="fedora"
VERSION_ID="7.0"
PRETTY_NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.0 (Maipo)"

Answer 5

A trick working on numerous Linux distributions:

cat /etc/issue

---

Example on Red Hat 6 :

$ cat /etc/issue
CentOS release 6.7 (Final)
Kernel \r on an \m

$ 

Answer 6

最简单的命令是：

lsb_release -d

Answer 7

try

uname -r

or

cat /etc/issue

for recent linux machines

lsb_release -d

Answer 8

For folks who are reading this today, or in the future:
The kernel version that is RUNNING is your version of RedHat. There may be other versions installed, but not running.
Thus, if RedHat 5.1, 5.2 & 5.x are installed on the machine, only 1 can be running at a time. This is the version that was booted at system start uop.To determine which version is actually running, use the uname command:
uname -r
This returns the Kernel release number. For RedHat 5, it will be 2.6.18-[something]
RH 5.1 is 2.6.18-53
RH 5.2 is 2.6.18-92

To translate kernel release numbers into Redhat Version numbers, see this link:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Release Dates

Answer 9

The file /etc/redhat-release is standart way to get vendor version (including 5.X). I don't think you should ignore this way. Of course, you can use various tricks from other software to display the current version of OS, but anyway many of them are parsing the /etc files. As mentioned above you can use rpm query to get version. Another way to get such information: rpm -q <vendor-name>-release

BTW I agree with the commenters above that the way you knowing the version is the least of your problems if anyone can tamper with the standard /etc/redhat-release file or other system configuration files.

Additionally since RHEL 7.X versions you can also try hostnamectl | grep 'Operating System' hostnamectl | grep 'Operating System'