Operating System Inspector Nuances

[FatScottishGuy]

When running the name of operating system command on 2 almost identical servers, I get varying results from BF10 and BF9 but can’t seem to work out where it’s taking the name of the operating system from as /etc/release doesn’t seem to have text that matches the output for the endpoints.

/etc/release shows identical information on both endpoints

server1:~ # /opt/BESClient/bin/qna
Default masthead location, using /etc/opt/BESClient/actionsite.afxm
Q: name of operating system
A: Linux Red Hat Enterprise 8.6
T: 4115

server1:~ # rpm -q BESAgent
BESAgent-10.0.4.32-rhe6.x86_64

server2:~ # /opt/BESClient/bin/qna
Default masthead location, using /etc/opt/BESClient/actionsite.afxm
Q: name of operating system
A: Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6
T: 4254

server2:~ # rpm -q BESAgent
BESAgent-9.5.14.73-rhe6.x86_64

Any ideas?

[JasonWalker]

Support for RHEL 8 was added in 9.5.17, so the OS name may be un-normalized in earlier versions

[FatScottishGuy]

Do you have any idea where it takes the data from?

Do we know which version “normalised” the OS names also?

[JasonWalker]

The base of it would be from /etc/redhat-release, but we do a translation/normalization so the OS names always fit a pattern (like “starts with Linux”).
But we sometimes need to update those normalizations, which would come in a specific client version.
The 9.5.14 client is unsupported on Red Hat 8, and is probably lacking that name normalization.

[FatScottishGuy]

Perfect! Thanks Jason, that makes sense and gives me exactly what I need

[FatScottishGuy]

@JasonWalker I’ve just had to check this again as the person who raised it wanted me to look at it again

It seems the support for RHEL 8 came in 9.5.14

Any ideas?

@AlanM something you can advise?

[JasonWalker]

Ah, quite right - what I see in the 9.5.17 changelog was an update to the KB article detailing RHEL 8 support.