[Discuss] Getting OS/HW details?

[bogstad at pobox.com (Bill Bogstad)]

On Sun, Nov 4, 2012 at 4:36 AM, Derek Martin <invalid at pizzashack.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 03, 2012 at 12:27:48PM -0400, Kurt Keville wrote:
>> root at J1:~# uname -a
>> Linux J1 3.0.0-9-generic #14-Ubuntu SMP Tue Aug 23 17:02:50 UTC 2011
>> i686    athlon i386 GNU/Linux
>>
>> since it is Ubuntu and I have a date, I should be able to divine the
>> distro... but 3.0.0-9-generic is unique to 11.10... and noone ever
>> dowrevs a kernel, do they?
>
> The other methods are faster and more reliable, and pretty ubiquitous,
> so there's not a lot of incentive for someone to compile such a
> database.  Distros probably never downgrade, but older distros may
> well upgrade, and that doesn't take into account if (you are not the
> admin of the box, and) the admin installs a custom kernel.

Where "custom" can be very strange.   I force installed a 64-bit stock
Ubuntu kernel on a working 32-bit install.   (I was tired of running a
PAE kernel and wanted to stick with a 32-bit user space.)   Turns out
it actually ran fairly well.    Unfortunately, I seem to recall that
Ubuntu's update manager was confused by this setup.   In addition,
getting Virtualbox working in that environment didn't look to be
easy...

Bill Bogstad