What RHEL OS version am i running? 2

[khalidaaa]

Simple question from a newbie in red hat linux. How to find out the OS version of a running machine?

Regards,
Khalid

 

[Grenage]

Try the following from the terminal:

uname -a

"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area" - Major Mike Shearer

 

[QatQat]

that will give you info about the kernel

try

cat /etc/issue


to get info about the linux distribution

QatQat

If I could have sex each time I reboot my server, I would definitely prefer Windoz over Linux!

 

[Grenage]

Ah, touche.

"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area" - Major Mike Shearer

 

[khalidaaa]

Thanks QatQat and have another star!

Now one more question, is there specific kernels that can run on each RHEL OS? Is the kernel OS dependent?

Or the kernel is something related to the HW?

Regards,
Khalid

 

[QatQat]

Linux is a kernel.
Modern linux kernels have a modular structure; you can see a module as a windoz driver to run specific hardware.

On top of a linux kernel many "distributions" (or you can call them OS) have been built.

RHEL is a distribution, generally it is for server purposes.
it is, together with Debian, one of the root distros from which most of the others are derived.
It uses a very stable kernel but hardly the newest; some funky hardware may be supported better in distributions like Fedora (if you like RedHat flavour) or Ubuntu (if you like Debian flavour).

The kernel is software and not hardware but deals with your hardware so if your hardware is not supported probably either you need to load the correct kernel module or in some cases you will need to recompile the kernel but if you are at the beginning of your linux experience, that may result in a unbootable machine so I would not recommend it.

Good news is that you almost never need to recompile it with recent kernels.
QatQat

If I could have sex each time I reboot my server, I would definitely prefer Windoz over Linux!

 

[khalidaaa]

Thanks again QatQat. Now here is what I'm trying to go with this. I have just recently attended red hat courses and i'm asked to upgrade a red hat farm from a company that we aquired. Now i don't know exactly what is in there but the first thing that i found is that their workstations are running a version of red hat (RHEL 4 Update 3) on unsupported HW (HP xw8200). This type of HW is only certified for RHEL 4 Update 1! So i've already escalated this to our management.

Now is this bad as it looks? Will red hat be able to continue supporting us (under the maintenance contract) eventhough we are running under an uncertified HW? I'm not sure.

One more thing, the application that they need to upgrade requires 2.6.9-42.ELsmp kernel on RHEL 4 Update 4. How can i updgrade the OS from Update 3 to Update 4? I heard from the course instructor that it is always better to reinstall instead of upgradeing the OS.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Khalid

 

[QatQat]

I would not stress too much. Uncertified hardware does not necessarily mean unsupported.

I am myself a RHCE and I have installed RHEL on the most bizarre hardware without problems.

Concerning whether they would support their platform running on uncertified hardware, my opinion is that they would not even ask you. After all they are RH and not Microsoft.
As a rule think that support guys tend to invoke terms and conditions of the agreement only when they are facing problems they cannot solve.

To get to your last point then, I would disagree with your instructor slightly:
It is always "easier" to reinstall.
In reality you will find that production server cannot be wiped out so easily and you will have to look into upgrading them.



QatQat

If I could have sex each time I reboot my server, I would definitely prefer Windoz over Linux!

 

[lgarner]

Between major versions, like 3 to 4 or 4 to 5, I'd prefer to reinstall rather than update, just to clean out the cruft that accumulates. But updating is fine in minor increments. Just runing "up2date -u" (as I recall) should do it.