Question

Is there an existing python module that can be used to detect which distro of Linux and which version of the distro is currently installed.

For example:

RedHat Enterprise 5
Fedora 11
Suse Enterprise 11
etc....

I can make my own module by parsing various files like /etc/redhat-release but I was wondering if a module already exists?

Cheers, Ivan

Answer 1

Look up the docs for the platform module: http://docs.python.org/library/platform.html

Example:

>>> platform.uname()
( Linux ,  localhost ,  2.6.31.5-desktop-1mnb ,  #1 SMP Fri Oct 23 00:05:22 EDT 2009 ,  x86_64 ,  AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3600+ )
>>> platform.linux_distribution()
( Mandriva Linux ,  2010.0 ,  Official )

Answer 2

I ve written a package called distro (now used by pip) which aims to replace distro.linux_distribution. It works on many distributions which might return weird or empty tuples when using platform.

https://github.com/nir0s/distro (distro, on pypi)

It provides a much more elaborate API to retrieve distribution related information.

$ python
Python 2.7.12 (default, Nov  7 2016, 11:55:55) 
[GCC 6.2.1 20160830] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import distro
>>> distro.linux_distribution()
(u Antergos Linux ,   , u ARCHCODE )

By the way, platform.linux_distribution is to be removed in Python 3.7.

Answer 3

The above answer doesn t work on RHEL 5.x. The quickest way is on a redhat-like system is to read and look at the /etc/redhat-release file. This file is updated every time you run an update and the system gets upgraded by a minor release number.

$ python
>>> open( /etc/redhat-release , r ).read().split(   )[6].split( . )
[ 5 ,  5 ]

If you take the split parts out it will just give you string. No module like you asked, but I figured it was short and elegant enough that you may find it useful.

Answer 4

Might not be the best way, but I used subprocess to execute uname -v and then looked for the distro name in the output.

import subprocess
process = subprocess.Popen([ uname , -v ], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
stdout = process.communicate()[0]
distro = format(stdout).rstrip("
")

if  FreeBSD  in distro:
   print "It s FreeBSD"
elif  Ubuntu  in distro:
   print "It s Ubuntu"
elif  Darwin  in distro:
   print "It s a Mac"
else:
   print "Unknown distro"

友情链接