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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXAMPLE | SEE ALSO | NOTES | COLOPHON |
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OS-RELEASE(5) os-release OS-RELEASE(5)
os-release - Operating system identification
/etc/os-release
/usr/lib/os-release
The /etc/os-release and /usr/lib/os-release files contain operating
system identification data.
The basic file format of os-release is a newline-separated list of
environment-like shell-compatible variable assignments. It is
possible to source the configuration from shell scripts, however,
beyond mere variable assignments, no shell features are supported
(this means variable expansion is explicitly not supported), allowing
applications to read the file without implementing a shell compatible
execution engine. Variable assignment values must be enclosed in
double or single quotes if they include spaces, semicolons or other
special characters outside of A–Z, a–z, 0–9. Shell special characters
("$", quotes, backslash, backtick) must be escaped with backslashes,
following shell style. All strings should be in UTF-8 format, and
non-printable characters should not be used. It is not supported to
concatenate multiple individually quoted strings. Lines beginning
with "#" shall be ignored as comments.
The file /etc/os-release takes precedence over /usr/lib/os-release.
Applications should check for the former, and exclusively use its
data if it exists, and only fall back to /usr/lib/os-release if it is
missing. Applications should not read data from both files at the
same time. /usr/lib/os-release is the recommended place to store OS
release information as part of vendor trees. /etc/os-release should
be a relative symlink to /usr/lib/os-release, to provide
compatibility with applications only looking at /etc. A relative
symlink instead of an absolute symlink is necessary to avoid breaking
the link in a chroot or initrd environment such as dracut.
os-release contains data that is defined by the operating system
vendor and should generally not be changed by the administrator.
As this file only encodes names and identifiers it should not be
localized.
The /etc/os-release and /usr/lib/os-release files might be symlinks
to other files, but it is important that the file is available from
earliest boot on, and hence must be located on the root file system.
For a longer rationale for os-release please refer to the
Announcement of /etc/os-release[1].
The following OS identifications parameters may be set using
os-release:
NAME=
A string identifying the operating system, without a version
component, and suitable for presentation to the user. If not set,
defaults to "NAME=Linux". Example: "NAME=Fedora" or "NAME="Debian
GNU/Linux"".
VERSION=
A string identifying the operating system version, excluding any
OS name information, possibly including a release code name, and
suitable for presentation to the user. This field is optional.
Example: "VERSION=17" or "VERSION="17 (Beefy Miracle)"".
ID=
A lower-case string (no spaces or other characters outside of
0–9, a–z, ".", "_" and "-") identifying the operating system,
excluding any version information and suitable for processing by
scripts or usage in generated filenames. If not set, defaults to
"ID=linux". Example: "ID=fedora" or "ID=debian".
ID_LIKE=
A space-separated list of operating system identifiers in the
same syntax as the ID= setting. It should list identifiers of
operating systems that are closely related to the local operating
system in regards to packaging and programming interfaces, for
example listing one or more OS identifiers the local OS is a
derivative from. An OS should generally only list other OS
identifiers it itself is a derivative of, and not any OSes that
are derived from it, though symmetric relationships are possible.
Build scripts and similar should check this variable if they need
to identify the local operating system and the value of ID= is
not recognized. Operating systems should be listed in order of
how closely the local operating system relates to the listed
ones, starting with the closest. This field is optional. Example:
for an operating system with "ID=centos", an assignment of
"ID_LIKE="rhel fedora"" would be appropriate. For an operating
system with "ID=ubuntu", an assignment of "ID_LIKE=debian" is
appropriate.
VERSION_CODENAME=
A lower-case string (no spaces or other characters outside of
0–9, a–z, ".", "_" and "-") identifying the operating system
release code name, excluding any OS name information or release
version, and suitable for processing by scripts or usage in
generated filenames. This field is optional and may not be
implemented on all systems. Examples: "VERSION_CODENAME=buster",
"VERSION_CODENAME=xenial"
VERSION_ID=
A lower-case string (mostly numeric, no spaces or other
characters outside of 0–9, a–z, ".", "_" and "-") identifying the
operating system version, excluding any OS name information or
release code name, and suitable for processing by scripts or
usage in generated filenames. This field is optional. Example:
"VERSION_ID=17" or "VERSION_ID=11.04".
PRETTY_NAME=
A pretty operating system name in a format suitable for
presentation to the user. May or may not contain a release code
name or OS version of some kind, as suitable. If not set,
defaults to "PRETTY_NAME="Linux"". Example: "PRETTY_NAME="Fedora
17 (Beefy Miracle)"".
ANSI_COLOR=
A suggested presentation color when showing the OS name on the
console. This should be specified as string suitable for
inclusion in the ESC [ m ANSI/ECMA-48 escape code for setting
graphical rendition. This field is optional. Example:
"ANSI_COLOR="0;31"" for red, or "ANSI_COLOR="1;34"" for light
blue.
CPE_NAME=
A CPE name for the operating system, in URI binding syntax,
following the Common Platform Enumeration Specification[2] as
proposed by the NIST. This field is optional. Example:
"CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:17""
HOME_URL=, SUPPORT_URL=, BUG_REPORT_URL=, PRIVACY_POLICY_URL=
Links to resources on the Internet related the operating system.
HOME_URL= should refer to the homepage of the operating system,
or alternatively some homepage of the specific version of the
operating system. SUPPORT_URL= should refer to the main support
page for the operating system, if there is any. This is primarily
intended for operating systems which vendors provide support for.
BUG_REPORT_URL= should refer to the main bug reporting page for
the operating system, if there is any. This is primarily intended
for operating systems that rely on community QA.
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL= should refer to the main privacy policy page
for the operation system, if there is any. These settings are
optional, and providing only some of these settings is common.
These URLs are intended to be exposed in "About this system" UIs
behind links with captions such as "About this Operating System",
"Obtain Support", "Report a Bug", or "Privacy Policy". The values
should be in RFC3986 format[3], and should be "http:" or "https:"
URLs, and possibly "mailto:" or "tel:". Only one URL shall be
listed in each setting. If multiple resources need to be
referenced, it is recommended to provide an online landing page
linking all available resources. Examples:
"HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"" and
"BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/""
BUILD_ID=
A string uniquely identifying the system image used as the origin
for a distribution (it is not updated with system updates). The
field can be identical between different VERSION_IDs as BUILD_ID
is an only a unique identifier to a specific version.
Distributions that release each update as a new version would
only need to use VERSION_ID as each build is already distinct
based on the VERSION_ID. This field is optional. Example:
"BUILD_ID="2013-03-20.3"" or "BUILD_ID=201303203".
VARIANT=
A string identifying a specific variant or edition of the
operating system suitable for presentation to the user. This
field may be used to inform the user that the configuration of
this system is subject to a specific divergent set of rules or
default configuration settings. This field is optional and may
not be implemented on all systems. Examples: "VARIANT="Server
Edition"", "VARIANT="Smart Refrigerator Edition"" Note: this
field is for display purposes only. The VARIANT_ID field should
be used for making programmatic decisions.
VARIANT_ID=
A lower-case string (no spaces or other characters outside of
0–9, a–z, ".", "_" and "-"), identifying a specific variant or
edition of the operating system. This may be interpreted by other
packages in order to determine a divergent default configuration.
This field is optional and may not be implemented on all systems.
Examples: "VARIANT_ID=server", "VARIANT_ID=embedded"
If you are reading this file from C code or a shell script to
determine the OS or a specific version of it, use the ID and
VERSION_ID fields, possibly with ID_LIKE as fallback for ID. When
looking for an OS identification string for presentation to the user
use the PRETTY_NAME field.
Note that operating system vendors may choose not to provide version
information, for example to accommodate for rolling releases. In this
case, VERSION and VERSION_ID may be unset. Applications should not
rely on these fields to be set.
Operating system vendors may extend the file format and introduce new
fields. It is highly recommended to prefix new fields with an OS
specific name in order to avoid name clashes. Applications reading
this file must ignore unknown fields. Example:
"DEBIAN_BTS="debbugs://bugs.debian.org/""
NAME=Fedora
VERSION="17 (Beefy Miracle)"
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=17
PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 17 (Beefy Miracle)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;34"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:17"
HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"
systemd(1), lsb_release(1), hostname(5), machine-id(5),
machine-info(5)
1. Announcement of /etc/os-release
http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/os-release
2. Common Platform Enumeration Specification
http://scap.nist.gov/specifications/cpe/
3. RFC3986 format
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986
This page is part of the systemd (systemd system and service manager)
project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd⟩. If you have a bug
report for this manual page, see
⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/#bugreports⟩. This
page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git⟩ on 2018-02-02. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the repos‐
itory was 2018-02-02.) If you discover any rendering problems in
this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is a better or
more up-to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not part
of the original manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
systemd 234 OS-RELEASE(5)
Pages that refer to this page: systemd-nspawn(1), machine-id(5), machine-info(5), systemd.directives(7), systemd.index(7), kernel-install(8)
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