What version of RHEL am I using?

Question

From the shell and without root privileges, how can I determine what Red Hat Enterprise Linux version I'm running?

Ideally, I'd like to get both the major and minor release version, for example RHEL 4.0 or RHEL 5.1, etc.

Solution 1

You can use the lsb_release command on various Linux distributions:

lsb_release -i -r 

This will tell you the Distribution and Version and is a little bit more accurate than accessing files that may or may not have been modified by the admin or a software package. As well as working across multiple distros.

For RHEL, you should use:

cat /etc/redhat-release

Solution 2

You can look at the contents of /etc/redhat-release, which will look something like this:

$ cat /etc/redhat-release 
CentOS release 5.4 (Final)

The contents are different for an actual RHEL system. This technique works on all RedHat derivatives, including CentOS, Fedora, and others.

Solution 3

I prefer to use the /etc/issue file.

$ cat /etc/issue

I've seen many situations where /etc/redhat-release has been modified to meet software compatibility requirements (Dell or HP's management agents, for instance).

Solution 4

The most reliable way when lsb_release is not installed is:

# rpm -q --queryformat '%{VERSION}' redhat-release-server
6Server

# rpm -q --queryformat '%{RELEASE}' redhat-release-server
6.4.0.4.el6

On minimal installs, lsb_release is missing.

To get this working also with Red Hat clones (credit goes to comments):

# rpm -q --queryformat '%{VERSION}' $(rpm -qa '(redhat|sl|slf|centos|oraclelinux)-release(|-server|-workstation|-client|-computenode)')

Or, as a single command (rather than two "rpm"'s being executed):

# rpm -qa --queryformat '%{VERSION}\n' '(redhat|sl|slf|centos|oraclelinux)-release(|-server|-workstation|-client|-computenode)'

Use sed/cut and other text manipulating UNIX tools to get what you want.

Solution 5

Assuming it truly is a Red Hat release (not Centos):

rpm -q redhat-release

Or just run:

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 (i.e. 2.6.9-89 is RHEL5 U4).

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Comments

[Decebal]

command not found on my CentOS 5.4 box :(

[Zypher]

@gbjbaanb: That's strange I tested it on a fresh 5.4 minimal install and it worked just fine...

[Tom]

lsb_release -i -r -bash: lsb_release: command not found. However, cat /etc/redhat-release Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.6 (Tikanga)

[Dan Pritts]

This seems to work, more generically: rpm -qa '(oraclelinux|sl|redhat|centos)-release(|-server)' sl is for Scientific Linux; if you know the right name for other RHEL rebuilds maybe comment below. Warning - not extensively tested.

[sborsky]

Just for the record: Does not work on RHEL 6.5 minimal install. Command lsb_release is nowhere to be found.

[lzap]

Yeah thanks, one note: does not work with RHEL Worstation.

[fsoppelsa]

This is the most appropriate answer to the question.

[Jens Timmerman]

lsb_release is not a lightweight package, It pulls in CUPS to provide ‘/usr/bin/lp’, which pulls in some pdf translation goop, which pulls in some rendering libraries...

[Stefan Lasiewski]

/etc/issue also works on other OSes as well, such as Debian & Ubuntu, and works with Linux OSes that don't conform to the Linux Standards Base, and lightweight OSes that don't have the lsb* utilities installed.

[mika]

Oh ! And now that time has passed, what would be RHEL6 ? RHEL7 ? Hum... Here are the answers: access.redhat.com/articles/3078#RHEL7

[David Tonhofer]

This is not reliable. Apparently /etc/issue is meant to be parsed by agetty, which replaces the escape sequences with proper information. If you just cat it, the result may be underwhelming. On Fedora, one gets Fedora release 20 (Heisenbug) Kernel \r on an \m (\l), which tells you something but on RHEL7, one just gets \S Kernel \r on an \m.

[Dan Pritts]

One note - this runs a lot slower than parsing /etc/foo-release.

[warren]

or rpm -qa | grep release is even easier

[chicks]

lsb_release is the first thing to try, but since that might not be installed looking at files is a good Plan B.

[bye]

@chicks Given that the question asks for a test for Redhat systems, and lsb_release is not installed by default on redhat systems and /etc/redhat-release is, then lsb_release is obviously not the first thing to try!

[bye]

"For RHEL, you should use..." And after all, this question is specifically about RHEL...

[Dan Pritts]

Interesting, useful. Unfortunately, not present on RHEL6 so of limited value at the moment.

[Neil Mayhew]

If you're going to do remote stuff on a lot of machines, I strongly recommend using Ansible rather than hand-rolled bash scripts.

[Neil Mayhew]

I also recommend not enabling root login over ssh

[Dennis Nolte]

@bye It is the first thing to try (at least in my opinion) , you always try the things which should be common on all distributions first, then only you switch to distribution-specific solutions.

[user2751502]

Note that /etc/issue may be replaced by the local admin and hence is not a reliable source of information.