How to get Amazon EC2 instance operating system info?

Question

I just setup an EC2 instance running Linux. Is there a way to get the version/distribution of Linux that is running on the instance via the terminal?

uname -a should give you the information about the Kernel, build time, and some other info, including vendor... (courtesy of Tiernan0) — soandos, May 31 '11 at 20:00

score 32 · Accepted Answer · answered May 31 '11 at 20:41

32

For distro info:

cat /etc/issue

For Kernel/architecture (as mentioned previously):

uname -a

answered May 31 '11 at 20:41

CJ Travis

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cat /etc/issue worked. – David Jun 02 '11 at 15:15
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Well, unless the sysadmin puts anything else in `/etc/issue`, as that is a locally managed file which is displayed prior to login and could literally be anything (or nothing). :) For example, my systems currently say "systems require authorization, unauthorized access is illegal" in there. Anyone who cares about security at all probably _doesn't_ put all of the OS identifying information in /etc/issue. – dannysauer Jul 14 '17 at 22:06
@dannysauer where else would you put it. All information about anything is stored on the storage device. Sometimes I see this information embed in a binary executable that can print the information out, but that is little different in security measure than a plain text file, considering both any text file and any executable binary share the same filesystem based protections – ThorSummoner May 08 '19 at 20:45
@ThorSummoner - the contents of /etc/issue are displayed *before* the login prompt. That's the security issue. – dannysauer May 11 '19 at 22:42

dannysauer · Answer 2 · 2018-02-08T04:21:47.493

The portable command for Linux Standard Base-compatible distributions (which is pretty much everything popular) is lsb_release. The distribution can be obtained by "-i" and the version comes from "-r". The "-s" option suppresses the name column and just shows the value, and -a shows everything lsb_release knows about the system. So, for example on a RHEL 5.5 system:

$ lsb_release -s -i
RedHatEnterpriseServer

$ lsb_release -s -r
5.5

$ lsb_release -a
LSB Version:    :core-3.1-amd64:core-3.1-ia32:core-3.1-noarch:graphics-3.1-amd64:graphics-3.1-ia32:graphics-3.1-noarch
Distributor ID: RedHatEnterpriseServer
Description:    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.5 (Tikanga)
Release:        5.5
Codename:       Tikanga

If you're on Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu, Debian, or anything else derived from those (Fedora, CentOS, whatever), this command will work. Otherwise, you'll have to figure out some distro-specific info. RedHat, for example again, installs a package named redhat-release and creates a file in /etc:

$ rpm -q redhat-release
redhat-release-5Server-5.5.0.2

$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.5 (Tikanga)

Here's what it looks like on a freshly-provisioned (Feb 2, 2017) Amazon Linux 2 system - after I reset the hostname:

[ec2-user@fresh-amazon-host ~]$ cat /etc/system-release
Amazon Linux release 2.0 (2017.12) LTS Release Candidate
[ec2-user@fresh-amazon-host ~]$ cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Amazon Linux"
VERSION="2.0 (2017.12)"
ID="amzn"
ID_LIKE="centos rhel fedora"
VERSION_ID="2.0"
PRETTY_NAME="Amazon Linux 2.0 (2017.12) LTS Release Candidate"
ANSI_COLOR="0;33"
CPE_NAME="cpe:2.3:o:amazon:amazon_linux:2.0"
HOME_URL="https://amazonlinux.com/"

IMHO, you really should use lsb_release if it's available. If you're just doing it visually, lsb_release -a is easy to remember and reasonably easy to read. But if that's not an option, /etc/os-release is populated as above on quite a few recent Linux OS versions.

I your first approach and get the following error `-bash: lsb_release: command not found`. I also tried your second approach and can't find anything mentioning redhat in `/etc`. Any other suggestions? — David, May 31 '11 at 21:42
Start by checking to see if rpm and apt-get are on the system; run "which rpm" and "which apt-get". If you have rpm, do an "rpm -qa | less" and see if there's anything there that sounds like a distribution. If you have apt-get, try "dpkg -l | less" and do the same thing. And try "ls -d /etc/*rel*" to see if there's any release file or anything in /etc. Oh, you might also do a "find / -name lsb_release" just in case lsb_release isn't in your path. — dannysauer, May 31 '11 at 22:17
`apt-get` is not on the system. I don't see anything identifiable with `rpm -qa|less`. `ls -d /etc/*rel*` worked. I then `nano /etc/system-release`. In the file it tells me that the OS is `Amazon Linux AMI release 2011.02.1.1`. Thanks. — David, Jun 02 '11 at 15:15
downvote since `lsb_release` isn't available on amazon linux, which generally leads to this question being asked... `lsb_release` requires a large dep chain that comes with `redhat-lsb-core` and aws chooses to leave that off - https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=519816 — keen, Jan 18 '18 at 23:28
I made the rest of the answer more clear (which some people apparently weren't reading), and included the actual output from current Amazon Linux 2. — dannysauer, Feb 08 '18 at 04:24

score 11 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 31 '15 at 12:46

11

This worked for me:

# cat /etc/os-release

NAME="Amazon Linux AMI"
VERSION="2015.03"
ID="amzn"
ID_LIKE="rhel fedora"
VERSION_ID="2015.03"
PRETTY_NAME="Amazon Linux AMI 2015.03"
ANSI_COLOR="0;33"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:amazon:linux:2015.03:ga"
HOME_URL="http://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/"

edited Mar 31 '15 at 12:46

Jawa

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answered Mar 31 '15 at 09:27

Kevin Murray

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Just a heads up. I am running Amazon Linux AMI 2011.09 and this did not work but another comments `cat /usr/share/doc/system-release/ReleaseNotes.txt` did. This probably works on newer editions. – Mauvis Ledford Apr 03 '15 at 20:34

score 2 · Answer 4 · edited May 31 '11 at 23:20

2

uname -a should give you the information about the Kernel, build time, and some other info, including vendor...

edited May 31 '11 at 23:20

studiohack

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answered May 31 '11 at 19:54

TiernanO

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 21 '14 at 07:50

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As you can see when log into an AMI EC2 Amazon Linux AMI:

"See /usr/share/doc/system-release/ for latest release notes."

So... just type:

cat /usr/share/doc/system-release/ReleaseNotes.txt

answered Mar 21 '14 at 07:50

frommelmak

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This worked for me in `Amazon Linux AMI 2011.09`. – Mauvis Ledford Apr 03 '15 at 20:34

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 08 '20 at 05:31

0

You can simply go on the /etc/ folder and check it there. There is a file, named system-release you can just cat it and find out your system info.

~ cat /etc/system-release 
~ Amazon Linux release 2 (Karoo)

answered Nov 08 '20 at 05:31

MD Nasirul Islam

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How to get Amazon EC2 instance operating system info?

6 Answers6