Determine OS from a single command line operation

Question

Introduction:

I have a 'magic' tool that can perform a command line operation on a machine if I provide the IP. The tool knows the OS that machine is using and executes the command on cmd/shell based on whether it is windows/linux and returns the output of the command back blindly.

C:> tool.exe 172.140.56.2 "ipconfig"

Assumptions:

One OS per machine. Tool has no problem executing the command (whether it fails or not is a different problem)
The OS is either windows or linux always.
I determine the OS based on the command result

Problem:

Using this power of being able to execute a command, I want to determine the OS

My Solution:

Execute ipconfig command. If result is

-bash: ipconfig: command not found

It is linux.

Else if it is like this:

Windows IP Configuration
Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:
...

then Windows.

Question:

I wanted to know if this is a foolproof way of doing this. I want a command which would not fail under certain scenarios. (say cygwin installed on windows allowing linux commands to succeed. Or ipconfig succeeding on linux under some special scneario.)

I can process the command output with some parser, if that helps in any way.

Just to clear any confusion. It can be ANY command. I ust used ipconfig in my example.

I assume you can't modify the 'magic' tool in any way since clearly that tool knows somehow and it would seem simplest simply to have it spit that information out at you. — Etan Reisner, Oct 22 '14 at 19:35
Yes. consider i cannot dig into the 'magic' tool or even identify how it does its 'magic' — 42cornflakes, Oct 22 '14 at 19:56

Brean · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-27T22:22:57.140

2

If I understood your problem correctly, then uname is the ideal command. If it's any Unix-system (including OSX), it'll return the correct variable, and if it's Windows it'll return command not found or similar.

edited Oct 27 '14 at 22:22

answered Oct 22 '14 at 19:42

Brean

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1

Yes. This seems like a more sensible command to execute. But let me keep the question open in case someone thinks otherwise. – 42cornflakes Oct 22 '14 at 19:55
I considered `uname` but disliked the "causes an error" aspect. Hence my comment on the OP of `echo "$PATH"`. Which is valid for both OSes and returns clearly distinguishable output on each. – Etan Reisner Oct 22 '14 at 21:50
1

*"(and I believe also OSX)"* OS X *is* unix. With the (tm), none the less. – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Oct 24 '14 at 04:38

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 22 '14 at 23:55

Safest way to determine Linux/version is

cat /etc/*release

Sample output.

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/"

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 30 '19 at 20:08

Another command that should work is set, which displays name and value of each environment variable. Any shell on Linux supports it (although output is different between csh and bash). Output from a Windows system would have PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE and other standard variables in it (see https://ss64.com/nt/syntax-variables.html), which are very unlikely to be set in Linux.

Determine OS from a single command line operation

3 Answers3

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