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Linux Quick Tips

How to Find Which Version of Red Hat is Installed

Q: Is there a quick way for me to see what version of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) is installed on my companies workstations?

A: Red Hat, CentOS and Fedora all have a file called redhat-release that contains the version name. You can simply read that file to find out what version your system is running.

Example on a RHEL 6 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6) system:

$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.3 (Santiago)

Example on a RHEL 5 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5) system:

$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.8 (Tikanga)

Example on a Fedora 17 system:

$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle)

You can also find what kernel  you are running along with some other system information using the uname command.

 $ uname -a
Linux bighat.putorius.net 3.5.3-1.fc17.i686 #1 SMP Wed Aug 29 19:25:38 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
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