Why would a Red Hat Enterprise Server 6.5 report as Linux Oracle Enterprise Server 6.5?

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1

I have a server that our Linux guys tell me is running Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.5 (Santiago), but BigFix is claiming that the server is a Linux Oracle Enterprise Server 6.5 (2.6.32-431.20.5.el6.x86_64).

QnA (/opt/BESClient/bin/qna) is reporting

Default masthead location, using /etc/opt/BESClient/actionsite.afxm
Q: Operating System
A: Linux Oracle Enterprise Server 6.5%0a (2.6.32-431.20.5.el6.x86_64)
T: 4437

But …

[root@vml-omsrep2 bin]# cd /etc
[root@vml-omsrep2 etc]# cat redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.5 (Santiago)

Can @AlanM or someone else point me in the right direction for troubleshooting? Why the difference?

BTW: The client installed is 9.0.876.0

2

Check /etc for other *-release files and check what’s in them.
If it’s RHEL I would’t expect anything with Oracle Linux in them.

3

There are three “-release” files with the following content.

  • oracle-release
    Oracle Linux Server release 6.5
  • redhat-release
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.5 (Santiago)
  • system-release
    Oracle Linux Server release 6.5
4

Something to chat to your Linux folks about - I wouldn’t expect any mention of Oracle in a genuine RHEL system, so no file called oracle-release and system-release should be stating its Red Hat.

# ls *-release
lsb-release  redhat-release  system-release

# cat system-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.7 (Santiago)
5

The files you mentioned being present suggest that the machine actually IS an Oracle Enterprise Linux machine.

The file “redhat-release” is generally there for compatibility examination by applications to know what this “Linux” distro is compatible with. Oracle changed their names for a while and went to the other “release” file name so there may have been a period where the OS showed up as RedHat due to this change.

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