/etc/redhat-release

[inode0]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 2:15 PM, Stainforth, Matthew (SD/DS)
<Matthew.Stainforth at gnb.ca> wrote:
>> The "pain point" I mentioned was the inconsistent treatment of
>> /etc/redhat-release which causes maintenance work for those of us who
>> do need to parse it in scripts over time. We can expect distinct cases
>> for each major release of RHEL but there have also been occasions
>> where this file has changed in unpredictable ways across minor update
>> levels as well.
>
> Have you thought about parsing the output of "rpm -q redhat-release"?  I have need of the same functionality
> and was going to use this approach.

I just began with RHEL3 ... and over time it grew into a bit of a
mess. If I were starting over I might consider this but I don't think
the rpm release versions map all that cleanly onto major.minor release
numbers either.

If you find a slick way to do that though do share it.

John