Which of these three commands is telling the TRUE Redhat release information

Question

I was checking for the Redhat release so this time I used three different commands. Two commands gave the same result but the third command gave different result. Which one is right.

[root@DBtest2 ~]# cat /etc/redhat-release
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 4 (Tikanga)
    [root@DBtest2 ~]# /usr/bin/lsb_release --d
    Description:    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 4 (Tikanga)
    [root@DBtest2 ~]# cat /etc/issue
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.5 (Tikanga)
    Kernel \r on an \m

Answer 1

I'd lean more toward the redhat-release. You could use the rpm -q --whatprovides command to determine the name of the package that is providing /etc/redhat-release.

[tim@c5 ~]$ rpm -q --whatprovides /etc/redhat-release
centos-release-5-5.el5.centos

If you don't trust that, then you could look at the detailed information of the package. Pay attention to Version and Release.

[tim@c5 ~]$ rpm -qi --whatprovides /etc/redhat-release
Name        : centos-release               Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 5                                 Vendor: CentOS
Release     : 5.el5.centos                  Build Date: Sun 25 Apr 2010 04:25:31 PM PDT
Install Date: Thu 20 May 2010 04:07:47 PM PDT      Build Host: builder10.centos.org
Group       : System Environment/Base       Source RPM: centos-release-5-5.el5.centos.src.rpm
Size        : 35485                            License: GPL
Signature   : DSA/SHA1, Mon 26 Apr 2010 04:40:57 PM PDT, Key ID a8a447dce8562897
Summary     : CentOS release file
Description :
CentOS release files

If you still don't trust what you're seeing, you could try looking at

[tim@c5 etc]# rpm -qai | grep Release | awk -F' ' '{print $3}' | head -15
23.2.2
24.20060715
1.el5
35.el5
32.2.1.1
4
2.fc6
45.el5.centos
4.el5
1
2.el5
0.1
5.el5
1.el5
15.el5

Hopefully you'll find some sort of pattern that answers your question while searching through all the package information.

Good luck.

Update #1:

You could also try:

[tim@c6 ~]# rpm -q --whatrequires \
  $(rpm -ql \
    $(rpm -q --whatprovides /etc/redhat-release)
  ) | grep -v ' '
initscripts-9.03.27-1.el6.centos.x86_64

Update #2:

I wanted to make sure the command I provided in my first update worked right so I spun up a RHEL5 instance at AWS. It looks like it works.

[root@ip-10-172-23-67 ~]# rpm -q --whatrequires \
>   $(rpm -ql \
>     $(rpm -q --whatprovides /etc/redhat-release)
>   ) | grep -v ' '
initscripts-8.45.30-3.el5_5.1

Answer 2

Maybe you can do one of the following:

% cat /proc/version 
Linux version 2.6.35.14-106.fc14.x86_64 (mockbuild@x86-09.phx2.fedoraproject.org) (gcc version 4.5.1 20100924 (Red Hat 4.5.1-4) (GCC) ) #1 SMP Wed Nov 23 13:07:52 UTC 2011

-or-

uname -a
Linux grinchy 2.6.35.14-106.fc14.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Nov 23 13:07:52 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux