How to detect the OS from a Bash script

Question

I would like to keep my  bashrc and  bash login files in version control so that I can use them between all the computers I use  The problem is I have some OS specific aliases so I was looking for a way to determine if the script is running on Mac nbsp OS nbsp X  Linux or Cygwin   What is the proper way to detect the operating system in a Bash script

User · Answer

I wrote a personal Bash library and scripting framework that uses GNU shtool to do a rather accurate platform detection.

GNU shtool is a very portable set of scripts that contains, among other useful things, the 'shtool platform' command. Here is the output of:

shtool platform -v -F "%sc (%ac) %st (%at) %sp (%ap)"

on a few different machines:

Mac OS X Leopard: 
    4.4BSD/Mach3.0 (iX86) Apple Darwin 9.6.0 (i386) Apple Mac OS X 10.5.6 (iX86)

Ubuntu Jaunty server:
    LSB (iX86) GNU/Linux 2.9/2.6 (i686) Ubuntu 9.04 (iX86)

Debian Lenny:
    LSB (iX86) GNU/Linux 2.7/2.6 (i686) Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (iX86)

This produces pretty satisfactory results, as you can see. GNU shtool is a little slow, so I actually store and update the platform identification in a file on the system that my scripts call. It's my framework, so that works for me, but your mileage may vary.

Now, you'll have to find a way to package shtool with your scripts, but it's not a hard exercise. You can always fall back on uname output, also.

EDIT:

I missed the post by Teddy about config.guess (somehow). These are very similar scripts, but not the same. I personally use shtool for other uses as well, and it has been working quite well for me.

User · Answer

In bash  use  OSTYPE and  HOSTTYPE  as documented  this is what I do   If that is not enough  and if even uname or uname -a  or other appropriate options  does not give enough information  there   s always the config guess script from the GNU project  made exactly for this purpose

User · Answer

OSTYPE  You can simply use pre-defined  OSTYPE variable e g    case   OSTYPE  in   solaris   echo  SOLARIS       darwin    echo  OSX        linux     echo  LINUX       bsd       echo  BSD       msys      echo  WINDOWS                 echo  unknown   OSTYPE     esac   However it s not recognized by the older shells  such as Bourne shell      uname  Another method is to detect platform based on uname command   See the following script  ready to include in  bashrc      Detect the platform  similar to  OSTYPE  OS   uname   case  OS in    Linux       OS  Linux      alias ls  ls --color auto            FreeBSD       OS  FreeBSD      alias ls  ls -G            WindowsNT       OS  Windows            Darwin        OS  Mac            SunOS       OS  Solaris            AIX              esac   You can find some practical example in my  bashrc     Here is similar version used on Travis CI   case   uname   tr    upper       lower     in   linux       export TRAVIS OS NAME linux          darwin       export TRAVIS OS NAME osx          msys       export TRAVIS OS NAME windows                 export TRAVIS OS NAME notset        esac

User · Answer

I would suggest avoiding some of these answers  Don t forget that you can choose other forms of string comparison  which would clear up most of the variations  or ugly code offered   One such solution would be a simple check  such as    if      OSTYPE      darwin     then   Which has the added benefit of matching any version of Darwin  despite it s version suffix  This also works for any variations of Linux one may expect   You can see some additional examples within my dotfiles here

User · Answer

uname   or   uname -a   if you want more information

User · Answer

You can use the following   OS   uname -s    then you can use OS variable in your script

User · Answer

For my  bashrc  I use the following code   platform  unknown  unamestr  uname  if      unamestr      Linux      then    platform  linux  elif      unamestr      FreeBSD      then    platform  freebsd  fi   Then I do somethings like   if     platform     linux      then    alias ls  ls --color auto  elif     platform     freebsd      then    alias ls  ls -G  fi   It s ugly  but it works  You may use case instead of if if you prefer

User · Answer

This should be safe to use on all distros     cat  etc  release   This produces something like this        DISTRIB ID LinuxMint      DISTRIB RELEASE 17      DISTRIB CODENAME qiana      DISTRIB DESCRIPTION  Linux Mint 17 Qiana       NAME  Ubuntu       VERSION  14 04 1 LTS  Trusty Tahr       ID ubuntu      ID LIKE debian      PRETTY NAME  Ubuntu 14 04 1 LTS       VERSION ID  14 04       HOME URL  http   www ubuntu com        SUPPORT URL  http   help ubuntu com        BUG REPORT URL  http   bugs launchpad net ubuntu     Extract assign to variables as you wish  Note  On some setups  This may also give you some errors that you can ignore        cat   etc upstream-release  Is a directory

User · Answer

In bash  use  OSTYPE and  HOSTTYPE  as documented  this is what I do   If that is not enough  and if even uname or uname -a  or other appropriate options  does not give enough information  there   s always the config guess script from the GNU project  made exactly for this purpose

User · Answer

In bash  use  OSTYPE and  HOSTTYPE  as documented  this is what I do   If that is not enough  and if even uname or uname -a  or other appropriate options  does not give enough information  there   s always the config guess script from the GNU project  made exactly for this purpose

User · Answer

This checks a bunch of known files to identfy if the linux distro is Debian or Ubunu  then it defaults to the  OSTYPE variable   os  Uknown  unamestr    OSTYPE   0-9      os    compgen -G   etc  release   gt   dev null   amp  amp  cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   tr -d  NAME         echo   unamestr    echo   os

User · Answer

I tend to keep my  bashrc and  bash alias on a file share that all platforms can access  This is how I conquer the problem in my  bash alias   if    -f  name of share   bash alias   uname      then        name of share   bash alias   uname  fi   And I have for example a  bash alias Linux with   alias ls  ls --color auto    This way I keep platform specific and portable code separate  you can do the same for  bashrc

User · Answer

The bash manpage says that the variable OSTYPE stores the name of the operation system   OSTYPE Automatically set to a string that describes the operating system on which bash is executing    The  default  is  system- dependent   It is set to linux-gnu here  jio

User · Answer

Doing the following helped perform the check correctly for ubuntu   if      OSTYPE      linux     then     sudo apt-get install  lt some-package gt  fi

User · Answer

You can use the following   OS   uname -s    then you can use OS variable in your script

User · Answer

For my  bashrc  I use the following code   platform  unknown  unamestr  uname  if      unamestr      Linux      then    platform  linux  elif      unamestr      FreeBSD      then    platform  freebsd  fi   Then I do somethings like   if     platform     linux      then    alias ls  ls --color auto  elif     platform     freebsd      then    alias ls  ls -G  fi   It s ugly  but it works  You may use case instead of if if you prefer

User · Answer

Detecting operating system and CPU type is not so easy to do portably   I have a sh script of about 100 lines that works across a very wide variety of Unix platforms  any system I have used since 1988   The key elements are   uname -p is processor type but is usually unknown on modern Unix platforms  uname -m will give the  machine hardware name  on some Unix systems   bin arch  if it exists  will usually give the type of processor  uname with no arguments will name the operating system    Eventually you will have to think about the distinctions between platforms and how fine you want to make them   For example  just to keep things simple  I treat i386 through i686   any  Pentium   and any  AMD Athlon   all as x86   My    profile runs an a script at startup which sets one variable to a string indicating the combination of CPU and operating system   I have platform-specific bin  man  lib  and include directories that get set up based on that   Then I set a boatload of environment variables   So for example  a shell script to reformat mail can call  e g    LIB mailfmt which is a platform-specific executable binary   If you want to cut corners  uname -m and plain uname will tell you what you want to know on many platforms   Add other stuff when you need it    And use case  not nested if

User · Answer

Try using  uname   For example  in Linux   uname -a    According to the manual page  uname conforms to SVr4 and POSIX  so it should be available on Mac nbsp OS nbsp X and Cygwin too  but I can t confirm that   BTW   OSTYPE is also set to linux-gnu here

User · Answer

I tried the above messages across a few Linux distros and found the following to work best for me   It   s a short  concise exact word answer that works for Bash on Windows as well   OS   cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   tr -d  NAME        echo  OS   Ubuntu

User · Answer

Detecting operating system and CPU type is not so easy to do portably   I have a sh script of about 100 lines that works across a very wide variety of Unix platforms  any system I have used since 1988   The key elements are   uname -p is processor type but is usually unknown on modern Unix platforms  uname -m will give the  machine hardware name  on some Unix systems   bin arch  if it exists  will usually give the type of processor  uname with no arguments will name the operating system    Eventually you will have to think about the distinctions between platforms and how fine you want to make them   For example  just to keep things simple  I treat i386 through i686   any  Pentium   and any  AMD Athlon   all as x86   My    profile runs an a script at startup which sets one variable to a string indicating the combination of CPU and operating system   I have platform-specific bin  man  lib  and include directories that get set up based on that   Then I set a boatload of environment variables   So for example  a shell script to reformat mail can call  e g    LIB mailfmt which is a platform-specific executable binary   If you want to cut corners  uname -m and plain uname will tell you what you want to know on many platforms   Add other stuff when you need it    And use case  not nested if

User · Answer

I would suggest avoiding some of these answers  Don t forget that you can choose other forms of string comparison  which would clear up most of the variations  or ugly code offered   One such solution would be a simple check  such as    if      OSTYPE      darwin     then   Which has the added benefit of matching any version of Darwin  despite it s version suffix  This also works for any variations of Linux one may expect   You can see some additional examples within my dotfiles here

User · Answer

Below it s an approach to detect Debian and RedHat based Linux OS making use of the  etc lsb-release and  etc os-release  depending on the Linux flavor you re using  and take a simple action based on it       bin bash set -e  YUM PACKAGE NAME  python python-devl python-pip openssl-devel  DEB PACKAGE NAME  python2 7 python-dev python-pip libssl-dev    if cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   grep CentOS  then     echo                                                       echo  Installing packages  YUM PACKAGE NAME on CentOS      echo                                                       yum install -y  YUM PACKAGE NAME  elif cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   grep Red  then     echo                                                       echo  Installing packages  YUM PACKAGE NAME on RedHat      echo                                                       yum install -y  YUM PACKAGE NAME  elif cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   grep Fedora  then     echo                                                        echo  Installing packages  YUM PACKAGE NAME on Fedorea      echo                                                        yum install -y  YUM PACKAGE NAME  elif cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   grep Ubuntu  then     echo                                                       echo  Installing packages  DEB PACKAGE NAME on Ubuntu      echo                                                       apt-get update     apt-get install -y  DEB PACKAGE NAME  elif cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   grep Debian   then     echo                                                       echo  Installing packages  DEB PACKAGE NAME on Debian      echo                                                       apt-get update     apt-get install -y  DEB PACKAGE NAME  elif cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   grep Mint   then     echo                                                     echo  Installing packages  DEB PACKAGE NAME on Mint      echo                                                     apt-get update     apt-get install -y  DEB PACKAGE NAME  elif cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   grep Knoppix   then     echo                                                         echo  Installing packages  DEB PACKAGE NAME on Kanoppix      echo                                                         apt-get update     apt-get install -y  DEB PACKAGE NAME  else     echo  OS NOT DETECTED  couldn t install package  PACKAGE      exit 1   fi  exit 0   Output example for Ubuntu Linux   delivery delivery-E5450  sudo sh detect os sh  sudo  password for delivery   NAME  Ubuntu                                                  Installing packages python2 7 python-dev python-pip libssl-dev on Ubuntu                                                 Ign http   dl google com stable InRelease Get 1 http   dl google com stable Release gpg  916 B                            Get 2 http   dl google com stable Release  1 189 B

User · Answer

I recommend to use this complete bash code lowercase        echo  quot  1 quot    sed  quot y ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  quot     OS  lowercase   uname    KERNEL  uname -r  MACH  uname -m   if    quot   OS  quot      quot windowsnt quot     then     OS windows elif    quot   OS  quot      quot darwin quot     then     OS mac else     OS  uname      if    quot   OS  quot     quot SunOS quot      then         OS Solaris         ARCH  uname -p          OSSTR  quot   OS    REV    ARCH   uname -v   quot      elif    quot   OS  quot     quot AIX quot      then         OSSTR  quot   OS   oslevel    oslevel -r   quot      elif    quot   OS  quot     quot Linux quot      then         if   -f  etc redhat-release     then             DistroBasedOn  RedHat              DIST  cat  etc redhat-release  sed s   release                  PSUEDONAME  cat  etc redhat-release   sed s          sed s                   REV  cat  etc redhat-release   sed s   release       sed s                 elif   -f  etc SuSE-release     then             DistroBasedOn  SuSe              PSUEDONAME  cat  etc SuSE-release   tr  quot  n quot       sed s VERSION                  REV  cat  etc SuSE-release   tr  quot  n quot        sed s                  elif   -f  etc mandrake-release     then             DistroBasedOn  Mandrake              PSUEDONAME  cat  etc mandrake-release   sed s          sed s                   REV  cat  etc mandrake-release   sed s   release       sed s                 elif   -f  etc debian version     then             DistroBasedOn  Debian              DIST  cat  etc lsb-release   grep   DISTRIB ID    awk -F      print  2                 PSUEDONAME  cat  etc lsb-release   grep   DISTRIB CODENAME    awk -F      print  2                 REV  cat  etc lsb-release   grep   DISTRIB RELEASE    awk -F      print  2             fi         if   -f  etc UnitedLinux-release     then             DIST  quot   DIST   cat  etc UnitedLinux-release   tr  quot  n quot        sed s VERSION       quot          fi         OS  lowercase  OS          DistroBasedOn  lowercase  DistroBasedOn          readonly OS         readonly DIST         readonly DistroBasedOn         readonly PSUEDONAME         readonly REV         readonly KERNEL         readonly MACH     fi  fi echo  OS echo  KERNEL echo  MACH  more examples examples here  https   github com coto server-easy-install blob master lib core sh

User · Answer

Try using  uname   For example  in Linux   uname -a    According to the manual page  uname conforms to SVr4 and POSIX  so it should be available on Mac nbsp OS nbsp X and Cygwin too  but I can t confirm that   BTW   OSTYPE is also set to linux-gnu here

User · Answer

For my  bashrc  I use the following code   platform  unknown  unamestr  uname  if      unamestr      Linux      then    platform  linux  elif      unamestr      FreeBSD      then    platform  freebsd  fi   Then I do somethings like   if     platform     linux      then    alias ls  ls --color auto  elif     platform     freebsd      then    alias ls  ls -G  fi   It s ugly  but it works  You may use case instead of if if you prefer

User · Answer

In bash  use  OSTYPE and  HOSTTYPE  as documented  this is what I do   If that is not enough  and if even uname or uname -a  or other appropriate options  does not give enough information  there   s always the config guess script from the GNU project  made exactly for this purpose

User · Answer

I recommend to use this complete bash code lowercase        echo  quot  1 quot    sed  quot y ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  quot     OS  lowercase   uname    KERNEL  uname -r  MACH  uname -m   if    quot   OS  quot      quot windowsnt quot     then     OS windows elif    quot   OS  quot      quot darwin quot     then     OS mac else     OS  uname      if    quot   OS  quot     quot SunOS quot      then         OS Solaris         ARCH  uname -p          OSSTR  quot   OS    REV    ARCH   uname -v   quot      elif    quot   OS  quot     quot AIX quot      then         OSSTR  quot   OS   oslevel    oslevel -r   quot      elif    quot   OS  quot     quot Linux quot      then         if   -f  etc redhat-release     then             DistroBasedOn  RedHat              DIST  cat  etc redhat-release  sed s   release                  PSUEDONAME  cat  etc redhat-release   sed s          sed s                   REV  cat  etc redhat-release   sed s   release       sed s                 elif   -f  etc SuSE-release     then             DistroBasedOn  SuSe              PSUEDONAME  cat  etc SuSE-release   tr  quot  n quot       sed s VERSION                  REV  cat  etc SuSE-release   tr  quot  n quot        sed s                  elif   -f  etc mandrake-release     then             DistroBasedOn  Mandrake              PSUEDONAME  cat  etc mandrake-release   sed s          sed s                   REV  cat  etc mandrake-release   sed s   release       sed s                 elif   -f  etc debian version     then             DistroBasedOn  Debian              DIST  cat  etc lsb-release   grep   DISTRIB ID    awk -F      print  2                 PSUEDONAME  cat  etc lsb-release   grep   DISTRIB CODENAME    awk -F      print  2                 REV  cat  etc lsb-release   grep   DISTRIB RELEASE    awk -F      print  2             fi         if   -f  etc UnitedLinux-release     then             DIST  quot   DIST   cat  etc UnitedLinux-release   tr  quot  n quot        sed s VERSION       quot          fi         OS  lowercase  OS          DistroBasedOn  lowercase  DistroBasedOn          readonly OS         readonly DIST         readonly DistroBasedOn         readonly PSUEDONAME         readonly REV         readonly KERNEL         readonly MACH     fi  fi echo  OS echo  KERNEL echo  MACH  more examples examples here  https   github com coto server-easy-install blob master lib core sh

User · Answer

Detecting operating system and CPU type is not so easy to do portably   I have a sh script of about 100 lines that works across a very wide variety of Unix platforms  any system I have used since 1988   The key elements are   uname -p is processor type but is usually unknown on modern Unix platforms  uname -m will give the  machine hardware name  on some Unix systems   bin arch  if it exists  will usually give the type of processor  uname with no arguments will name the operating system    Eventually you will have to think about the distinctions between platforms and how fine you want to make them   For example  just to keep things simple  I treat i386 through i686   any  Pentium   and any  AMD Athlon   all as x86   My    profile runs an a script at startup which sets one variable to a string indicating the combination of CPU and operating system   I have platform-specific bin  man  lib  and include directories that get set up based on that   Then I set a boatload of environment variables   So for example  a shell script to reformat mail can call  e g    LIB mailfmt which is a platform-specific executable binary   If you want to cut corners  uname -m and plain uname will tell you what you want to know on many platforms   Add other stuff when you need it    And use case  not nested if

User · Answer

Try using  uname   For example  in Linux   uname -a    According to the manual page  uname conforms to SVr4 and POSIX  so it should be available on Mac nbsp OS nbsp X and Cygwin too  but I can t confirm that   BTW   OSTYPE is also set to linux-gnu here

User · Answer

The bash manpage says that the variable OSTYPE stores the name of the operation system   OSTYPE Automatically set to a string that describes the operating system on which bash is executing    The  default  is  system- dependent   It is set to linux-gnu here  jio

User · Answer

Try using  uname   For example  in Linux   uname -a    According to the manual page  uname conforms to SVr4 and POSIX  so it should be available on Mac nbsp OS nbsp X and Cygwin too  but I can t confirm that   BTW   OSTYPE is also set to linux-gnu here

User · Answer

uname   or   uname -a   if you want more information

User · Answer

try this   DISTRO   cat  etc  -release   grep -w NAME   cut -d  -f2   tr -d      echo  Determined platform   DISTRO

User · Answer

Doing the following helped perform the check correctly for ubuntu   if      OSTYPE      linux     then     sudo apt-get install  lt some-package gt  fi

User · Answer

The bash manpage says that the variable OSTYPE stores the name of the operation system   OSTYPE Automatically set to a string that describes the operating system on which bash is executing    The  default  is  system- dependent   It is set to linux-gnu here  jio

User · Answer

The bash manpage says that the variable OSTYPE stores the name of the operation system   OSTYPE Automatically set to a string that describes the operating system on which bash is executing    The  default  is  system- dependent   It is set to linux-gnu here  jio

User · Answer

I wrote these sugars in my  bashrc   if os          OSTYPE      1        if nix           case   OSTYPE  in          linux   hurd   msys   cygwin   sua   interix   sys  gnu             bsd   darwin   sys  bsd             sunos   solaris   indiana   illumos   smartos   sys  sun        esac           sys        1          So I can do stuff like   if nix gnu  amp  amp  alias ls  ls --color auto   amp  amp  export LS COLORS       if nix bsd  amp  amp  export CLICOLORS on  amp  amp  export LSCOLORS       if os linux  amp  amp  alias psg  ps -FA   grep   alternative to pgrep if nix bsd  amp  amp  alias psg  ps -alwx   grep -i   alternative to pgrep if os darwin  amp  amp  alias finder  open -R

User · Answer

uname   or   uname -a   if you want more information

User · Answer

uname   or   uname -a   if you want more information

User · Answer

This should be safe to use on all distros     cat  etc  release   This produces something like this        DISTRIB ID LinuxMint      DISTRIB RELEASE 17      DISTRIB CODENAME qiana      DISTRIB DESCRIPTION  Linux Mint 17 Qiana       NAME  Ubuntu       VERSION  14 04 1 LTS  Trusty Tahr       ID ubuntu      ID LIKE debian      PRETTY NAME  Ubuntu 14 04 1 LTS       VERSION ID  14 04       HOME URL  http   www ubuntu com        SUPPORT URL  http   help ubuntu com        BUG REPORT URL  http   bugs launchpad net ubuntu     Extract assign to variables as you wish  Note  On some setups  This may also give you some errors that you can ignore        cat   etc upstream-release  Is a directory

User · Answer

I tried the above messages across a few Linux distros and found the following to work best for me   It   s a short  concise exact word answer that works for Bash on Windows as well   OS   cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   tr -d  NAME        echo  OS   Ubuntu

User · Answer

You can use following if clause and expand it as needed   if      OSTYPE   0-9          darwin    then     aminute ago  -v-1M  elif       OSTYPE   0-9          linux-gnu    then     aminute ago  -d   1 minute ago    fi

User · Answer

I think the following should work  I m not sure about win32 though   if      OSTYPE      linux-gnu       then               elif      OSTYPE      darwin       then           Mac OSX elif      OSTYPE      cygwin      then           POSIX compatibility layer and Linux environment emulation for Windows elif      OSTYPE      msys      then           Lightweight shell and GNU utilities compiled for Windows  part of MinGW  elif      OSTYPE      win32      then           I m not sure this can happen  elif      OSTYPE      freebsd       then               else           Unknown  fi

User · Answer

For my  bashrc  I use the following code   platform  unknown  unamestr  uname  if      unamestr      Linux      then    platform  linux  elif      unamestr      FreeBSD      then    platform  freebsd  fi   Then I do somethings like   if     platform     linux      then    alias ls  ls --color auto  elif     platform     freebsd      then    alias ls  ls -G  fi   It s ugly  but it works  You may use case instead of if if you prefer

User · Answer

This checks a bunch of known files to identfy if the linux distro is Debian or Ubunu  then it defaults to the  OSTYPE variable   os  Uknown  unamestr    OSTYPE   0-9      os    compgen -G   etc  release   gt   dev null   amp  amp  cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   tr -d  NAME         echo   unamestr    echo   os

User · Answer

OSTYPE  You can simply use pre-defined  OSTYPE variable e g    case   OSTYPE  in   solaris   echo  SOLARIS       darwin    echo  OSX        linux     echo  LINUX       bsd       echo  BSD       msys      echo  WINDOWS                 echo  unknown   OSTYPE     esac   However it s not recognized by the older shells  such as Bourne shell      uname  Another method is to detect platform based on uname command   See the following script  ready to include in  bashrc      Detect the platform  similar to  OSTYPE  OS   uname   case  OS in    Linux       OS  Linux      alias ls  ls --color auto            FreeBSD       OS  FreeBSD      alias ls  ls -G            WindowsNT       OS  Windows            Darwin        OS  Mac            SunOS       OS  Solaris            AIX              esac   You can find some practical example in my  bashrc     Here is similar version used on Travis CI   case   uname   tr    upper       lower     in   linux       export TRAVIS OS NAME linux          darwin       export TRAVIS OS NAME osx          msys       export TRAVIS OS NAME windows                 export TRAVIS OS NAME notset        esac

User · Answer

You can use following if clause and expand it as needed   if      OSTYPE   0-9          darwin    then     aminute ago  -v-1M  elif       OSTYPE   0-9          linux-gnu    then     aminute ago  -d   1 minute ago    fi

User · Answer

I tend to keep my  bashrc and  bash alias on a file share that all platforms can access  This is how I conquer the problem in my  bash alias   if    -f  name of share   bash alias   uname      then        name of share   bash alias   uname  fi   And I have for example a  bash alias Linux with   alias ls  ls --color auto    This way I keep platform specific and portable code separate  you can do the same for  bashrc

User · Answer

I wrote a personal Bash library and scripting framework that uses GNU shtool to do a rather accurate platform detection.

GNU shtool is a very portable set of scripts that contains, among other useful things, the 'shtool platform' command. Here is the output of:

shtool platform -v -F "%sc (%ac) %st (%at) %sp (%ap)"

on a few different machines:

Mac OS X Leopard: 
    4.4BSD/Mach3.0 (iX86) Apple Darwin 9.6.0 (i386) Apple Mac OS X 10.5.6 (iX86)

Ubuntu Jaunty server:
    LSB (iX86) GNU/Linux 2.9/2.6 (i686) Ubuntu 9.04 (iX86)

Debian Lenny:
    LSB (iX86) GNU/Linux 2.7/2.6 (i686) Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (iX86)

This produces pretty satisfactory results, as you can see. GNU shtool is a little slow, so I actually store and update the platform identification in a file on the system that my scripts call. It's my framework, so that works for me, but your mileage may vary.

Now, you'll have to find a way to package shtool with your scripts, but it's not a hard exercise. You can always fall back on uname output, also.

EDIT:

I missed the post by Teddy about config.guess (somehow). These are very similar scripts, but not the same. I personally use shtool for other uses as well, and it has been working quite well for me.

User · Answer

Below it s an approach to detect Debian and RedHat based Linux OS making use of the  etc lsb-release and  etc os-release  depending on the Linux flavor you re using  and take a simple action based on it       bin bash set -e  YUM PACKAGE NAME  python python-devl python-pip openssl-devel  DEB PACKAGE NAME  python2 7 python-dev python-pip libssl-dev    if cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   grep CentOS  then     echo                                                       echo  Installing packages  YUM PACKAGE NAME on CentOS      echo                                                       yum install -y  YUM PACKAGE NAME  elif cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   grep Red  then     echo                                                       echo  Installing packages  YUM PACKAGE NAME on RedHat      echo                                                       yum install -y  YUM PACKAGE NAME  elif cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   grep Fedora  then     echo                                                        echo  Installing packages  YUM PACKAGE NAME on Fedorea      echo                                                        yum install -y  YUM PACKAGE NAME  elif cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   grep Ubuntu  then     echo                                                       echo  Installing packages  DEB PACKAGE NAME on Ubuntu      echo                                                       apt-get update     apt-get install -y  DEB PACKAGE NAME  elif cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   grep Debian   then     echo                                                       echo  Installing packages  DEB PACKAGE NAME on Debian      echo                                                       apt-get update     apt-get install -y  DEB PACKAGE NAME  elif cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   grep Mint   then     echo                                                     echo  Installing packages  DEB PACKAGE NAME on Mint      echo                                                     apt-get update     apt-get install -y  DEB PACKAGE NAME  elif cat  etc  release   grep  NAME   grep Knoppix   then     echo                                                         echo  Installing packages  DEB PACKAGE NAME on Kanoppix      echo                                                         apt-get update     apt-get install -y  DEB PACKAGE NAME  else     echo  OS NOT DETECTED  couldn t install package  PACKAGE      exit 1   fi  exit 0   Output example for Ubuntu Linux   delivery delivery-E5450  sudo sh detect os sh  sudo  password for delivery   NAME  Ubuntu                                                  Installing packages python2 7 python-dev python-pip libssl-dev on Ubuntu                                                 Ign http   dl google com stable InRelease Get 1 http   dl google com stable Release gpg  916 B                            Get 2 http   dl google com stable Release  1 189 B

User · Answer

I think the following should work  I m not sure about win32 though   if      OSTYPE      linux-gnu       then               elif      OSTYPE      darwin       then           Mac OSX elif      OSTYPE      cygwin      then           POSIX compatibility layer and Linux environment emulation for Windows elif      OSTYPE      msys      then           Lightweight shell and GNU utilities compiled for Windows  part of MinGW  elif      OSTYPE      win32      then           I m not sure this can happen  elif      OSTYPE      freebsd       then               else           Unknown  fi

User · Answer

Detecting operating system and CPU type is not so easy to do portably   I have a sh script of about 100 lines that works across a very wide variety of Unix platforms  any system I have used since 1988   The key elements are   uname -p is processor type but is usually unknown on modern Unix platforms  uname -m will give the  machine hardware name  on some Unix systems   bin arch  if it exists  will usually give the type of processor  uname with no arguments will name the operating system    Eventually you will have to think about the distinctions between platforms and how fine you want to make them   For example  just to keep things simple  I treat i386 through i686   any  Pentium   and any  AMD Athlon   all as x86   My    profile runs an a script at startup which sets one variable to a string indicating the combination of CPU and operating system   I have platform-specific bin  man  lib  and include directories that get set up based on that   Then I set a boatload of environment variables   So for example  a shell script to reformat mail can call  e g    LIB mailfmt which is a platform-specific executable binary   If you want to cut corners  uname -m and plain uname will tell you what you want to know on many platforms   Add other stuff when you need it    And use case  not nested if

User · Answer

I wrote these sugars in my  bashrc   if os          OSTYPE      1        if nix           case   OSTYPE  in          linux   hurd   msys   cygwin   sua   interix   sys  gnu             bsd   darwin   sys  bsd             sunos   solaris   indiana   illumos   smartos   sys  sun        esac           sys        1          So I can do stuff like   if nix gnu  amp  amp  alias ls  ls --color auto   amp  amp  export LS COLORS       if nix bsd  amp  amp  export CLICOLORS on  amp  amp  export LSCOLORS       if os linux  amp  amp  alias psg  ps -FA   grep   alternative to pgrep if nix bsd  amp  amp  alias psg  ps -alwx   grep -i   alternative to pgrep if os darwin  amp  amp  alias finder  open -R

User · Answer

try this   DISTRO   cat  etc  -release   grep -w NAME   cut -d  -f2   tr -d      echo  Determined platform   DISTRO

[bash] How to detect the OS from a Bash script?

Examples related to bash

Examples related to os-detection