Gerard Beekmans said: > On Sat, 2003-10-18 at 22:27, Aaron J. Seigo wrote: >> standard /etc/release_version file or some such that was named the same >> on >> every Linux OS; perhaps the LSB already covers that, haven't checked. > > The FHS (different standard but LSB follows most of it) suggests a file > /etc/issue. The file is marked as optional, but most distributions do > use it. >
/etc/issue is used by getty to display a message at the console before the login prompt (It's optional in the sense that getty doesn't need it, it will only use it if it exists), it wouldn't be very accurate if distributions used that file to determine the version or current distribitution installed on the system just because people like to customise that file so that the console displays what they want to be displayed before the login prompt. There is too high a chance of that file being different on each machine, it would be better if they came up with their own file that isn't already being used by other applications so that they didn't have to worry about that. Cheers, Trevor
