Dev1 Galaxy Forum / Where is the release information stored?

Re: Where is the release information stored?

dummy@example.com (grafiksinc) — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:38:46 +0000

yeah the both do something like this

PRETTY_NAME="PeppermintOS"
NAME="Peppermint"
ID=debian
VERSION_CODENAME=daedalus
HOME_URL="https://peppermintos.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://sourceforge.net/p/peppermintos/pepos/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://sourceforge.net/p/peppermintos/pepos/"

You could be right some fluke during install any way thanks!

Re: Where is the release information stored?

dummy@example.com (chabala) — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 17:12:05 +0000

Does your /etc/os-release (or whatever it points to if it's a symlink) have data in it?

My best guess is that my install failed in some way and that it should be populated instead of empty.

Re: Where is the release information stored?

dummy@example.com (grafiksinc) — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 08:48:27 +0000

hmmm This is interesting I run both daedalus and excalibur and

in both cases lsb_release -a returns

Distributor ID:	Debian
Description:	PeppermintOS
Release:	n/a
Codename:	daedalus

and

Distributor ID:	Debian
Description:	PeppermintOS Devuan
Release:	n/a
Codename:	excalibur

I wonder what would cause your n/a's

Re: Where is the release information stored?

dummy@example.com (chabala) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:45:16 +0000

Looks like I'm running Debian something:

$ uname -a
Linux hp845g8 6.1.0-49-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.174-1 (2026-05-26) x86_64 GNU/Linux

I can make scripts:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

shopt -s nullglob

for file in /etc/*version /etc/*release; do
    echo "$file:"
    cat "$file"
done

$ ./checkRelease 
/etc/debian_version:
12.6
/etc/devuan_version:
daedalus
/etc/os-release:

But, do we need to code-golf this? Or can we just put some data in the os-release file?

Re: Where is the release information stored?

dummy@example.com (chris2be8) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:25:46 +0000

You could run ls -l /etc/*version and ls -l /etc/*release to see what files exist. As well as uname -a

Re: Where is the release information stored?

dummy@example.com (chabala) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 04:02:30 +0000

Yes:

$ cat /etc/debian_version
12.6
$ cat /etc/devuan_version
daedalus

No obvious peppermint_version file in /etc though.

But then, one has to remember that one is running devuan to know to check for devuan_version. So if I wanted a generic command to show me release information, it could become a script full of conditional checks like:

[ -s "/etc/redhat-release" ] && cat /etc/redhat-release
[ -s "/etc/arch-release" ] && cat /etc/arch-release
[ -s "/etc/debian_version" ] && cat /etc/debian_version
[ -s "/etc/devuan_version" ] && cat /etc/devuan_version

or, we could populate the /etc/os-release file, and not need a script. Some of those other tools I mentioned might even be able to find the information too.

Re: Where is the release information stored?

dummy@example.com (ralph.ronnquist) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 02:51:14 +0000

yes, it should have both.

Re: Where is the release information stored?

dummy@example.com (bigbenaugust) — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 02:27:22 +0000

Does it have

/etc/debian_version

/etc/devuan_version

Re: Where is the release information stored?

dummy@example.com (ralph.ronnquist) — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 03:06:55 +0000

check /var/lib/apt/lists

Where is the release information stored?

dummy@example.com (chabala) — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 01:39:49 +0000

I'm running Devuan-based PeppermintOS. Which version, you might ask; I've found it's difficult to tell.

I've noticed that all the places I'm used to looking to see my release information seem to be unpopulated:

neofetch: "OS: n/a x86_64"

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: n/a
Description: n/a
Release: n/a
Codename: n/a

$ ll /etc/os-release
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Jun 30 2024 /etc/os-release -> ../usr/lib/os-release

$ ll /usr/lib/os-release
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 20 08:42 /usr/lib/os-release

I know the whole point is not using systemd, but surely putting some release information in one of the well known locations would be good. Pretty sure the LSB spec isn't systemd specific.

Is there another distro-specific release information file I don't know about?