How to get the Debian codename without lsb_release

Question

I am trying to create a script that requires me to print the Debian codename so that I may echo it into the sources.list file.

I am trying to make this script work across any version of Debian, so I had hoped to set a bash variable of the release codename. This would be simple to do with lsb_release -c. However, our deployment images do not contain lsb_release by default - and with this script being required to fix the sources.list, installing lsb-release with apt-get would not be an option.

I have found numerous ways to get the release number and other info about the system, but cannot find a reliable place to get the codename.

(I am testing this with Debian Squeeze.)

Answer 1

You can use /etc/os-release:

(
  . /etc/os-release
  printf '%s\n' "$VERSION"
)
7 (wheezy)

Answer 2

For Debian distributions that don't ship with /etc/os-release (like Squeeze), you can use the following "hack". It exploits that the tzdata package provides a capability⁽¹⁾ that includes that name:

$ dpkg --status tzdata
Package: tzdata
...
Provides: tzdata-squeeze

So, you can post-process this to extract that part of the capability name:

dpkg --status tzdata|grep Provides|cut -f2 -d'-'

or, with less piping

dpkg --status tzdata|awk -F'[:-]' '$1=="Provides"{print $NF}'

---

⁽¹⁾ that's RedHat terminology, though

Answer 3

You can get the codename of your Debian distribution from /etc/os-release. Instead of attempting to parse this file, you can source it into a fresh environment, so as not to impact your current environment, and execute an echo command in that new environment.

env -i bash -c '. /etc/os-release; echo $VERSION_CODENAME'

To break it down:

• env : Run a command in a new environment.
• -i : Do not inherit the environment variables from the existing environment.
• bash : Run bash so that we have a shell to source the os-release file into, and to run the echo command.
• -c : Tell bash we want to execute a command rather than start an interactive shell.
• . /etc/os-release : Source the contents of os-release into our new environment. os-release contains a few lines setting environment variables, and this will set those environment variables in our new environment.
• ; : Separate this command and run the next command.
• echo $VERSION_CODENAME : Echo out the code name that was set by the os-release file.

Answer 4

You can print code along with version number of debian:

root@debian:/home/mohsen# grep "VERSION=" /etc/os-release |awk -F= {' print $2'}|sed s/\"//g
8 (jessie)

OR you can bare your code name from number and pranthese:

grep "VERSION=" /etc/os-release |awk -F= {' print $2'}|sed s/\"//g |sed s/[0-9]//g | sed s/\)$//g |sed s/\(//g
jessie

Answer 5

For systemd:

hostnamectl | grep "Operating System"

output:

  Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie)

Answer 6

this one might (or might not) be an alternate approach to what bcoca wrote on Debian squeeze - i tested it Ubuntu 18.04:

$ cat /etc/debian_version
buster/sid

Answer 7

Another heuristic is to see where the packages for the currently running OS come from.

Simple (and probably error-prone) variant:

fgrep -r /debian/ /etc/apt/sources.list \
    | egrep -v '^ *#' \
    | awk '{print $3}' \
    | egrep -v '[-/]'  \
    | uniq

A more reliable way is to parse the details out of the output of apt-cache policy (without further parameter):

apt-cache policy \
    | fgrep o=Debian, \
    | fgrep ,l=Debian, \
    | fgrep ,c=main, \
    | awk -F '[,=]' '{print $6}'

apt-cache policy lists all APT repositories in use on the local system. We filter out those which originate from Debian, which are labeled just Debian (i.e. not those labeled e.g. Debian debug), then only look at the main archive (not contrib or non-free) and then select the according value.

An even more stable approach would be to not rely on the element order and find the n= value in the remaining line:

apt-cache policy \
    | fgrep o=Debian, \
    | fgrep ,l=Debian, \
    | fgrep ,c=main, \
    | egrep -o 'n=[^, ]*' \
    | awk -F= '{print $2}'

Yet another possibility would be to parse the /var/lib/apt/lists/*Release files yourself instead of letting apt-cache do that:

egrep -l '^Origin: Debian$' /var/lib/apt/lists/*Release \
    | xargs egrep -l '^Label: Debian$' \
    | xargs egrep -L 'Codename: .*-' \
    | xargs fgrep Codename \
    | awk '{print $2}'

Answer 8

My need was to add some URL in sources.list. And to be able to dynamically put version code name, I use this piece of code (rely on the fact that code name is between parenthesis) : Inspired by @PersianGulf answer.

grep "VERSION=" /etc/os-release |awk -F= {' print tolower($2)'}|sed s/\.*\(//g | sed s/" ".*\"//g

Answer 9

Expanding upon @Costas answer, that command didn't work for 16.04 where it returned the full name "Xerial Xerus" but I only wanted "xerial" as that is how the repo I was trying to pull from separated the different versions. This command adds that only the first word will be returned, and that it will be all lowercase:

awk -F"[)(]+" '/VERSION=/ {print $2}' /etc/os-release | awk '{print $1}' | awk '{ print tolower($0) }'

This works for "jessie" as well

Answer 10

Only using grep:

grep -Po 'VERSION="[0-9]+ \(\K[^)]+' /etc/os-release

Try it (output as of writing this post):

$ docker run --rm debian:stable-slim grep -Po 'VERSION="[0-9]+ \(\K[^)]+' /etc/os-release
stretch

Answer 11

I'm going to leave this here :)

sed -e "0,/_.*_/s/.*_\(.*\)_.*/\1/;t;d" /var/lib/apt/cdroms.list

Edit: It's matching the first _<string>_ inside /var/lib/apt/cdroms.list

Answer 12

How to get the Debian codename without lsb_release

If you want only the codename and nothing else :

$ (. /etc/os-release; printf '%s\n' "$VERSION_CODENAME";)
bullseye

If you want to mimic lsb_release -c :

$ (. /etc/os-release; printf 'Codename: %s\n' "$VERSION_CODENAME";)
Codename: bullseye

If you want to mimic lsb_release -d :

$ (. /etc/os-release; printf 'Description: %s %s\n' "$NAME" "$VERSION";)
Description: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)

Reference

• Elegant answer that outputs version number and codename