So. Right now, most of our stuff tests for 'Debian/NetBSD' being in uname -v (and 'Debian' only shows up there, and only on kernels patched to know what an osv / OS Vendor is). While looking over a manpage for sysctl last night for other reasons, I think I found a better answer: the vendor sysctl tree. vendor.debian.release_major = 3 vendor.debian.release_minor = 0 vendor.debian.release_name = "Woody" (Or, perhaps, vendor.debian.version = struct, with major/minor/release) (Especially since the alternative test is generally checking for /etc/debian_version). So, 2 questions: 1) Should this augment or supplant uname -v? Supplant: We get rid of the osv patch, and only muck about with an upstream-approved-for-vendor-mucking place. Con: uname -v is currently the only 'obvious' display that tells folks that it's a Debian system; we currently have some number of patches that check for uname -v values. 2) Should we track anything other than the release it was compiled under? (and if so, remember that as far as I can see, we only have a limited set of data types we can use sanely). -- Joel Baker <fenton@debian.org>
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