os-release
systemd
os-release
5
os-release
Operating system identification
/etc/os-release
/usr/lib/os-release
Description
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. Blank lines are
permitted and ignored.
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.
Options
The following OS identifications parameters may be set using
os-release:
General information identifying the operating system
NAME=
A string identifying the operating system, without a version component, and
suitable for presentation to the user. If not set, a default of NAME=Linux may
be used.
Examples: NAME=Fedora, NAME="Debian GNU/Linux".
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, a default of
ID=linux may be used.
Examples: ID=fedora, 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.
Examples: 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.
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, a default of PRETTY_NAME="Linux" may be used
Example: PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 17 (Beefy Miracle)".
CPE_NAME=
A CPE name for the operating system, in URI binding syntax, following the Common Platform Enumeration Specification as
proposed by the NIST. This field is optional.
Example: CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:17"
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.
Information about the version of the operating system
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.
Examples: VERSION=17, VERSION="17 (Beefy Miracle)".
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.
Examples: VERSION_ID=17, VERSION_ID=11.04.
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.
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.
Examples: BUILD_ID="2013-03-20.3", BUILD_ID=201303203.
IMAGE_ID=
A lower-case string (no spaces or other characters outside of 0–9, a–z, ".", "_"
and "-"), identifying a specific image of the operating system. This is supposed to be used for
environments where OS images are prepared, built, shipped and updated as comprehensive, consistent
OS images. This field is optional and may not be implemented on all systems, in particularly not on
those that are not managed via images but put together and updated from individual packages and on
the local system.
Examples: IMAGE_ID=vendorx-cashier-system,
IMAGE_ID=netbook-image.
IMAGE_VERSION=
A lower-case string (mostly numeric, no spaces or other characters outside of 0–9,
a–z, ".", "_" and "-") identifying the OS image version. This is supposed to be used together with
IMAGE_ID described above, to discern different versions of the same image.
Examples: IMAGE_VERSION=33, IMAGE_VERSION=47.1rc1.
Presentation information and links
HOME_URL=
DOCUMENTATION_URL=
SUPPORT_URL=
BUG_REPORT_URL=
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL=
Links to resources on the Internet related to 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.
DOCUMENTATION_URL= should refer to the main documentation page for this
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 operating 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, 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/",
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/".
LOGO=
A string, specifying the name of an icon as defined by freedesktop.org Icon Theme
Specification. This can be used by graphical applications to display an operating system's
or distributor's logo. This field is optional and may not necessarily be implemented on all
systems.
Examples: LOGO=fedora-logo, LOGO=distributor-logo-opensuse
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.
Examples: ANSI_COLOR="0;31" for red, ANSI_COLOR="1;34"
for light blue, or ANSI_COLOR="0;38;2;60;110;180" for Fedora blue.
Distribution-level defaults and metadata
DEFAULT_HOSTNAME=
A string specifying the hostname if
hostname5 is not
present and no other configuration source specifies the hostname. Must be either a single DNS label
(a string composed of 7-bit ASCII lower-case characters and no spaces or dots, limited to the
format allowed for DNS domain name labels), or a sequence of such labels separated by single dots
that forms a valid DNS FQDN. The hostname must be at most 64 characters, which is a Linux
limitation (DNS allows longer names).
See org.freedesktop.hostname15
for a description of how
systemd-hostnamed.service8
determines the fallback hostname.
SYSEXT_LEVEL=
A lower-case string (mostly numeric, no spaces or other characters outside of 0–9,
a–z, ".", "_" and "-") identifying the operating system extensions support level, to indicate which
extension images are supported. See:
systemd-sysext8)
for more information.
Examples: SYSEXT_LEVEL=2, SYSEXT_LEVEL=15.14.
Notes
If you are using this file 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/".
Container and sandbox runtime managers may make the host's identification data available to
applications by providing the host's /etc/os-release (if available, otherwise
/usr/lib/os-release as a fallback) as
/run/host/os-release.
Examples
os-release file for Fedora Workstation
NAME=Fedora
VERSION="32 (Workstation Edition)"
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=32
PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 32 (Workstation Edition)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;38;2;60;110;180"
LOGO=fedora-logo-icon
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:32"
HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f32/system-administrators-guide/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicating_and_getting_help"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=32
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION=32
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:PrivacyPolicy"
VARIANT="Workstation Edition"
VARIANT_ID=workstation
Reading os-release in
sh1
See Also
systemd1,
lsb_release1,
hostname5,
machine-id5,
machine-info5