Detecting Gentoo

paul138 · Guru Joined: 09 Aug 2002 Posts: 370 Location: Ottawa, ON

I'm working on a script that requires it to know what linux distribution is installed. Does anyone know how to detect if Gentoo is the dist?
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Proteus · Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2002 4:15 pm Post subject:

I am not 100% sure because there are so many kernel sources offered for use with Gentoo but wouldn't the

paul138 · Guru Joined: 09 Aug 2002 Posts: 370 Location: Ottawa, ON

Unfortunatley no.

I have one system that reports 'Gentoo Linux' but the majority do not. Maybe something like RedHat's /etc/redhat-version file would be helpfull with this dist.

Anyone any more ideas?
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pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

uname -a on my machine doesn't report anything as Gentoo (vanilla kernel). I was just looking at uname -o (-o, --operating-system print the operating system), but it just outputs GNU/Linux. Is this something set in the kernel?
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paul138 · Guru Joined: 09 Aug 2002 Posts: 370 Location: Ottawa, ON

Maybe just the presence of Gentoo-specific scripts like rc-update and emerge would do it :-)

I think this is the enevitable solution.
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pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

I wonder if developers would respond to this if it were a bug (assuming there isn't currently a way to detect Gentoo's presence). Would seem a useful trinket.
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paul138 · Guru Joined: 09 Aug 2002 Posts: 370 Location: Ottawa, ON

I'll post it to bugzilla.

--edited--
Done. Bug #9558
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phong · Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2002 5:25 pm Post subject:

Since there hasn't been a fork of Gentoo yet, nor another distro that uses portage, checking for critical portage files is probably sufficient. Checking certain startup scripts for specific Gentoo phrases is probably somewhat more future-proof (/sbin/rc would be a good candidate - I think it's what says "Gentoo Linux" on startup). That is, of course, until all those scripts change.
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paul138 · Guru Joined: 09 Aug 2002 Posts: 370 Location: Ottawa, ON

I suppose the /etc/gentoo-release file would help ;-)

Narf! There it is.
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pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Bug #9558

*sigh* So, you really have no way of identifying the system as Gentoo, regardless of version. The original question was never answerd, which seems to be for developers to identify the system.
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paul138 · Guru Joined: 09 Aug 2002 Posts: 370 Location: Ottawa, ON

Yes. 2 posts up.

phong · Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2002 3:13 pm Post subject:

I have no /etc/gentoo-release...
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pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

paul138 · Guru Joined: 09 Aug 2002 Posts: 370 Location: Ottawa, ON

I see. They must have added it to the latest baselayout package,
1.8.4 here.

:roll:

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