Re: Which version of Debian from which physical device?

[Ben Finney <bignose@debian.org>]

Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> writes:

> However today, while chasing down an intermittent problem, I needed to
> know which point release was active and which physical device
> contained the OS. Usually I have gparted installed and can determine
> the active device by the "locked" symbol.

The question “which physical device contains the OS?” may not have a
simple answer:

* “physical device” can have multiple layers of abstraction involved, so
  it's somewhat arbitrary which one you pick as “physical”.

* “the OS” can be on many devices, so you need to pick which part of the
  OS you're interested in.

A question with a simpler answer: “which device is currently mounted
as the root filesystem?”, may serve as a useful proxy. Here is one answer:

    $ mount | grep 'on / '
    /dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered)

Does that proxy question suffice?

-- 
 \      “Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone on too |
  `\                                                long.” —Ogden Nash |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney