How To Find Out RedHat Version And More

Hi! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to the Unix Tutorial RSS feed to get regular tips & tricks for all flavors of Unix. You can follow me on Twitter, too! Thanks for visiting!

If you're a really curious mind, you won't be satisfied with simply knowing the current release of your RedHat Linux, that's why there's a few more commands you could use to satisfy your interest.

RedHat release

If you simply want to confirm whether you're using a RHEL4, RHEL5 or any of the previous RedHat Linux releases, this is the first place to look:

bash-3.1$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client release 5 (Tikanga)

RedHat kernel version and type

Next step is to find out the exact Linux kernel version on your system, and also confirm whether it's 64-bit or not:

bash-3.1$ uname -a
Linux rhserver123 2.6.18-8.el5 #1 SMP Fri Jan 26 14:15:14 EST 2007 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

RedHat kernel build

For the most curious ones, here's the last command. Use it to confirm who and when compiled the RedHat kernel you're using, and what gcc compiler was used in the build process.

bash-3.1$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.6.18-8.el5 (brewbuilder@ls20-bc1-14.build.redhat.com) (gcc version 4.1.1 20070105 (Red Hat 4.1.1-52)) #1 SMP Fri Jan 26 14:15:14 EST 2007

See also:

• How To Find Out the Release Version of Your Unix