I am new to linux (old to solaris), and have a number of linux servers I'm responsible for. When purchasing software, linux compatibility is listed in a number of different ways.

Example:

Red Hat Standard Edition 7.2 (2.4.7-10), and Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1 (2.4.9-e.3).

On a linux machine, the uname -a command returns

Linux 2.4.18-14 #1 Wed Sep 4 13:35:50 EDT 2002 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

What does that report? I do not see a file that says its a (ie) RedHat 8 Standard Edition or Advanced Server. Is there any?

Thank you very much.

I like to use the command:uname -r or uname -rp as it's less cluttered. On the command which you ran, uname -a the first number string which you get is the kernel version ( 2.4.18-14 ) then the date of release then the processor type.

On Redhat systems, you can run the command: cat /etc/redhat-release to find out what os version you have.

Thanks.

I looked at Redhat-release and on one machine it said

Red Hat Linux release 8.0 (Psyche)

Does that indicate Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition?

thanks

the entries i686, i686 etc in the uname command refer to what?

Red Hat Linux release 8.0 (Psyche) That would be a standard release. The Enterprise versions are labeled as AS### and ES#### . I'm not sure just what is the difference between AS and ES.

I may be off on this part but me thinks i686 refers to your processor and
i386 refers to the archecture as opposed to Sparc or something like that..