The following OS identifications parameters may be set using
os-release:
General information identifying the operating system
NAME=
A string identifying the operating system, without a version
component, and suitable for presentation to the user. If not
set, a default of "NAME=Linux" may be used.
Examples: "NAME=Fedora", "NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"".
ID=
A lower-case string (no spaces or other characters outside of
0–9, a–z, ".", "_" and "-") identifying the operating system,
excluding any version information and suitable for processing
by scripts or usage in generated filenames. If not set, a
default of "ID=linux" may be used.
Examples: "ID=fedora", "ID=debian".
ID_LIKE=
A space-separated list of operating system identifiers in the
same syntax as the ID= setting. It should list identifiers of
operating systems that are closely related to the local
operating system in regards to packaging and programming
interfaces, for example listing one or more OS identifiers
the local OS is a derivative from. An OS should generally
only list other OS identifiers it itself is a derivative of,
and not any OSes that are derived from it, though symmetric
relationships are possible. Build scripts and similar should
check this variable if they need to identify the local
operating system and the value of ID= is not recognized.
Operating systems should be listed in order of how closely
the local operating system relates to the listed ones,
starting with the closest. This field is optional.
Examples: for an operating system with "ID=centos", an
assignment of "ID_LIKE="rhel fedora"" would be appropriate.
For an operating system with "ID=ubuntu", an assignment of
"ID_LIKE=debian" is appropriate.
PRETTY_NAME=
A pretty operating system name in a format suitable for
presentation to the user. May or may not contain a release
code name or OS version of some kind, as suitable. If not
set, a default of "PRETTY_NAME="Linux"" may be used
Example: "PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 17 (Beefy Miracle)"".
CPE_NAME=
A CPE name for the operating system, in URI binding syntax,
following the Common Platform Enumeration Specification
Example: "CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:17""
VARIANT=
A string identifying a specific variant or edition of the
operating system suitable for presentation to the user. This
field may be used to inform the user that the configuration
of this system is subject to a specific divergent set of
rules or default configuration settings. This field is
optional and may not be implemented on all systems.
Examples: "VARIANT="Server Edition"", "VARIANT="Smart
Refrigerator Edition"".
Note: this field is for display purposes only. The VARIANT_ID
field should be used for making programmatic decisions.
VARIANT_ID=
A lower-case string (no spaces or other characters outside of
0–9, a–z, ".", "_" and "-"), identifying a specific variant
or edition of the operating system. This may be interpreted
by other packages in order to determine a divergent default
configuration. This field is optional and may not be
implemented on all systems.
Examples: "VARIANT_ID=server", "VARIANT_ID=embedded".
Information about the version of the operating system
VERSION=
A string identifying the operating system version, excluding
any OS name information, possibly including a release code
name, and suitable for presentation to the user. This field
is optional.
Examples: "VERSION=17", "VERSION="17 (Beefy Miracle)"".
VERSION_ID=
A lower-case string (mostly numeric, no spaces or other
characters outside of 0–9, a–z, ".", "_" and "-") identifying
the operating system version, excluding any OS name
information or release code name, and suitable for processing
by scripts or usage in generated filenames. This field is
optional.
Examples: "VERSION_ID=17", "VERSION_ID=11.04".
VERSION_CODENAME=
A lower-case string (no spaces or other characters outside of
0–9, a–z, ".", "_" and "-") identifying the operating system
release code name, excluding any OS name information or
release version, and suitable for processing by scripts or
usage in generated filenames. This field is optional and may
not be implemented on all systems.
Examples: "VERSION_CODENAME=buster",
"VERSION_CODENAME=xenial".
BUILD_ID=
A string uniquely identifying the system image originally
used as the installation base. In most cases, VERSION_ID or
IMAGE_ID+IMAGE_VERSION are updated when the entire system
image is replaced during an update. BUILD_ID may be used in
distributions where the original installation image version
is important: VERSION_ID would change during incremental
system updates, but BUILD_ID would not. This field is
optional.
Examples: "BUILD_ID="2013-03-20.3"", "BUILD_ID=201303203".
IMAGE_ID=
A lower-case string (no spaces or other characters outside of
0–9, a–z, ".", "_" and "-"), identifying a specific image of
the operating system. This is supposed to be used for
environments where OS images are prepared, built, shipped and
updated as comprehensive, consistent OS images. This field is
optional and may not be implemented on all systems, in
particularly not on those that are not managed via images but
put together and updated from individual packages and on the
local system.
Examples: "IMAGE_ID=vendorx-cashier-system",
"IMAGE_ID=netbook-image".
IMAGE_VERSION=
A lower-case string (mostly numeric, no spaces or other
characters outside of 0–9, a–z, ".", "_" and "-") identifying
the OS image version. This is supposed to be used together
with IMAGE_ID described above, to discern different versions
of the same image.
Examples: "IMAGE_VERSION=33", "IMAGE_VERSION=47.1rc1".
To summarize: if the image updates are built and shipped as
comprehensive units, IMAGE_ID+IMAGE_VERSION is the best fit.
Otherwise, if updates eventually completely replace previously
installed contents, as in a typical binary distribution,
VERSION_ID should be used to identify major releases of the
operating system. BUILD_ID may be used instead or in addition to
VERSION_ID when the original system image version is important.
Presentation information and links
HOME_URL=, DOCUMENTATION_URL=, SUPPORT_URL=, BUG_REPORT_URL=,
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL=
Links to resources on the Internet related to the operating
system. HOME_URL= should refer to the homepage of the
operating system, or alternatively some homepage of the
specific version of the operating system. DOCUMENTATION_URL=
should refer to the main documentation page for this
operating system. SUPPORT_URL= should refer to the main
support page for the operating system, if there is any. This
is primarily intended for operating systems which vendors
provide support for. BUG_REPORT_URL= should refer to the
main bug reporting page for the operating system, if there is
any. This is primarily intended for operating systems that
rely on community QA. PRIVACY_POLICY_URL= should refer to
the main privacy policy page for the operating system, if
there is any. These settings are optional, and providing only
some of these settings is common. These URLs are intended to
be exposed in "About this system" UIs behind links with
captions such as "About this Operating System", "Obtain
Support", "Report a Bug", or "Privacy Policy". The values
should be in RFC3986 format
Examples: "HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"",
"BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"".
LOGO=
A string, specifying the name of an icon as defined by
freedesktop.org Icon Theme Specification
Examples: "LOGO=fedora-logo",
"LOGO=distributor-logo-opensuse"
ANSI_COLOR=
A suggested presentation color when showing the OS name on
the console. This should be specified as string suitable for
inclusion in the ESC [ m ANSI/ECMA-48 escape code for setting
graphical rendition. This field is optional.
Examples: "ANSI_COLOR="0;31"" for red, "ANSI_COLOR="1;34""
for light blue, or "ANSI_COLOR="0;38;2;60;110;180"" for
Fedora blue.
Distribution-level defaults and metadata
DEFAULT_HOSTNAME=
A string specifying the hostname if hostname(5) is not
present and no other configuration source specifies the
hostname. Must be either a single DNS label (a string
composed of 7-bit ASCII lower-case characters and no spaces
or dots, limited to the format allowed for DNS domain name
labels), or a sequence of such labels separated by single
dots that forms a valid DNS FQDN. The hostname must be at
most 64 characters, which is a Linux limitation (DNS allows
longer names).
See org.freedesktop.hostname1(5) for a description of how
systemd-hostnamed.service(8) determines the fallback
hostname.
SYSEXT_LEVEL=
A lower-case string (mostly numeric, no spaces or other
characters outside of 0–9, a–z, ".", "_" and "-") identifying
the operating system extensions support level, to indicate
which extension images are supported. See
/usr/lib/extension-release.d/extension-release.IMAGE,
initrd
Examples: "SYSEXT_LEVEL=2", "SYSEXT_LEVEL=15.14".
Notes
If you are using this file to determine the OS or a specific
version of it, use the ID and VERSION_ID fields, possibly with
ID_LIKE as fallback for ID. When looking for an OS identification
string for presentation to the user use the PRETTY_NAME field.
Note that operating system vendors may choose not to provide
version information, for example to accommodate for rolling
releases. In this case, VERSION and VERSION_ID may be unset.
Applications should not rely on these fields to be set.
Operating system vendors may extend the file format and introduce
new fields. It is highly recommended to prefix new fields with an
OS specific name in order to avoid name clashes. Applications
reading this file must ignore unknown fields.
Example: "DEBIAN_BTS="debbugs://bugs.debian.org/"".
Container and sandbox runtime managers may make the host's
identification data available to applications by providing the
host's /etc/os-release (if available, otherwise
/usr/lib/os-release as a fallback) as /run/host/os-release.
