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chabala

Member

From: Lyons, IL, USA

Registered: 2026-04-20

Posts: 5  

Website

Where is the release information stored?

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?

ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,695  

Re: Where is the release information stored?

check /var/lib/apt/lists

bigbenaugust

Member

From: the 919

Registered: 2017-06-15

Posts: 13  

Re: Where is the release information stored?

Does it have

/etc/debian_version

or

/etc/devuan_version

?

ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,695  

Re: Where is the release information stored?

yes, it should have both.

chabala

Member

From: Lyons, IL, USA

Registered: 2026-04-20

Posts: 5  

Website

Re: Where is the release information stored?

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.

chris2be8

Member

Registered: 2018-08-11

Posts: 376  

Re: Where is the release information stored?

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

chabala

Member

From: Lyons, IL, USA

Registered: 2026-04-20

Posts: 5  

Website

Re: Where is the release information stored?

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?

grafiksinc

Member

Registered: 2020-08-16

Posts: 41  

Re: Where is the release information stored?

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

Last edited by grafiksinc (Today 08:49:03)

chabala

Member

From: Lyons, IL, USA

Registered: 2026-04-20

Posts: 5  

Website

Re: Where is the release information stored?

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.