Command to get list of patches applied
 

I am looking for a command in Linux which could list the patches applied to the machine. Along the lines of "showrev" on Solaris.

Which distro are you running?

uname -a gave me:
Linux NODENAME 2.4.21-32.0.1.ELsmp #1 SMP Tue May 17 17:46:51 EDT 2005 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

Thanks for your help in advance!

That doesn't reveal the distro, just the kernel version and architecture details.

There is a standard file called /etc/lsb-release which should contain your distro name and version, but this is a fairly recent addition to the Linux Standards Base, and as such does not exist on many older systems.

If it does exist, please say what is in it. If not, look also for these files:

The files /etc/lsb-release and /etc/debian_version are not present on the machine. When I do a cat on "/etc/*release*", it gave me
"2006030901dev Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 3 (Taroon Update 5)"

Aha, that's your distro then - Red Hat.

What do you mean by a list of patches? To me this can mean a few things:

1. Software updates. i.e. some sort of installation and/or update log for all packages on the system.
2. A list of modifications from the standard kernel sources which Red Hat provide (they have somewhat customised kernels)
3. A list of modifications from the standard sources of major applications, e.g. Apache.
4. Something else?

What exactly do you mean?

I was able to see the list of packages and their latest information from the "rpm -q -a" command.

I was refering to "list of modifications from the standard kernel sources which Red Hat provide (they have somewhat customised kernels)" when I said patches.

Thanks in advance!

I don't know the answer to this question, but that's because I don't use Red Hat. I'm sure someone out there will be able to tell you. If not, then you might want to take your question to the Red Hat support people (assuming you have a support contract), or some Red Hat user discussion mailing list / chat room.