Re: /etc/debian_version for Etch

[Jerome BENOIT <jgmbenoit@mailsnare.net>]

Hello All


Paul E Condon wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 12, 2005 at 10:37:09PM -0500, John Hasler wrote:
>
> > Jerome BENOIT writes:
> >
> > > what must /etc/debian_version contain for an Etch box ?
> >
> > Whatever you want it to say.  On this machine it says "testing/unstable".
> > --
>
>
> My test, doing a dist-upgrade on a Sarge system to move it to Etch, showed
> that dist-upgrade does not change the contents of /etc/debian-version.
> Also, the last modified date on /etc/debian-version is jul 26 2004, which
> is the time when I originally installed Sarge on that machine. 
>
> My concern is what can this be used for? It is clearly not useful as a way
> of finding out what is actually installed on the machine. If it is truly
> whatever one wants to put there, then it is hardly useful to scripts,
> which was suggested earlier as its use. So what is it for? 

The presence of this file may help to quickly determine that the box is a Debian box:
in some commercial installer script, the corresponding readhat file existence
is checked in oder to install to software. I guess this is the main utility of this file.

my 2 cents,
Jerome