I need to make script that behaves differently per system. Today it is possible to run bash even on microsoft windows, mac, linux, hp-ux, solaris etc...
How can I determine which of these operating systems I am on? I don't need exact version, I just need to know if I am on windows, linux, solaris...
There is a standard shell command "uname" which returns the current platform as a string
To use this in a shell program a typical stanza might be
#!/bin/sh
if [ `uname` = "Linux" ] ;
then
echo "we are on the operating system of Linux"
fi
if [ `uname` = "FreeBSD" ] ;
then
echo "we are on the operating system of FreeBSD"
fi
More specific information is available but unfortunately it varies according to platform. On many versions of Linux ( and ISTR, Solaris ) there is a /etc/issue file which has the version name and number for the distribution installed. So on ubuntu
if [ -e "/etc/issue" ] ;
then
issue=`cat /etc/issue`
set -- $issue
if [ $1 = "Ubuntu" ] ;
then
echo "we are on Ubuntu version " $2
fi
fi
This will give version information
I would look at the output of
uname -a
and look for specific strings, which can help you identify the system.
Or more specific
uname -s
With Windows, do you mean something like cygwin?
bash has a global var called $OSTYPE. Type echo $OSTYPE to see:
echo "$OSTYPE"
// linux-gnu
From the bash man page:
OSTYPE Automatically set to a string that describes the operating system on which bash is executing. The default is system-dependent.
An alternative is to use the uname command (without any arguments) or uname -s what it the same as uname defaults to -s.
Example on Linux
uname
// Linux
-s ? This was what I had before. Wasn't surekernel not the OS. But I'm with you, it looks like this is what the OP is looking for-s , or no arguments, as its the default, is correct. isn't it?