Sometimes I work on a terminal over network and I need to update or investigate a packet, software etc… What Packet manager do I use apt-get, rpm, or yum? What linux distro am I on anyway, Fedora, Ubuntu? Who’s driving this boat? Well after some research I discovered ways to find out the information I needed.

I need to run acceptance tests on a project. I also need to run these tests in different versions of Firefox, Like when a newer browser is released. So I have a local folder with versions of firefox from 18 to 43. I downloaded Firefox 49.0.2 locally then tried to run it from the folder $ 49.0.2/./firefox (This may look strange but its valid on the distro used) and I got an error libgtk-3.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory. Firefox versions 44 and 45 work fine.

Now what?

Linux distro

To find out the distribution information after the machine you are on: $ lsb_release -a

It will print the following information in the terminal.


LSB Version:    
Distributor ID:
Description:    
Release:        
Codename:

I find this to be the most useful for tracking down dependencies or software updates that are needed, Search Google, do a little reading etc…

Kernal release number

If you need to find the kernal release number

$ uname -r

Find installed packets like SSH or GTK+

If you are using a fedroa-based distribution (Think Red Hat flavored linux):

$ rpm -qa | grep 'gtk'

If you are using a Debian-based distribution (Think Ubuntu flavored linux):

$ dpkg -l openSSH

## Final It turns out that Firefox 46-49 will not work because I have an older version of the gtk+ library (2.0) and the newer versions need (3.0) to work. The distro is using yum as a packet manager and I don’t have permission to install any software or updates at this level. Editing the environmental variable PATH will not cut it this time.

Oh well, guess you can’t win them all! But now I know who talk too and what I need updated.