[WBEL-devel] An "Issue" with WBEL (pun intended)

[Johnny Hughes]

I don't think we want WBEL to have a /etc/redhat-release and I think
RedHat would be upset by an /etc/issue that showed WBEL to be RHEL 3 at
the login screen (and rightly so).  I think the way the Webmin issue was
handled is the right way. (The author was more than willing to modify
the program to work with WBEL).

If there are issues with major programs who won't change, then we should
address that separately for those programs.

Just my opinion...

-Johnny Hughes

On Sat, 2003-12-13 at 04:52, Simon J Mudd wrote:
> webmaster@ew3d.com (John Hinton) writes:
> 
> > I was just trying to install Webmin on WBEL. Turns out it looks in
> > /etc/issue to discover the version of Linux and installs based on
> > that. Yup, my issue is that issue is changed to White Box and Webmin
> > can't see it. I've contacted the auther of Webmin about adding up to
> > his list of good OSs. Well, anyway... at the moment what I need is the
> > original RHEL content of the 'issue' file so I can solve my issue! ;)
> 
> This is something which I think is an important issue to address.
> How similar to RH does WBL want to be?
> 
> I understand the need to distinguish the product from RHEL3 but I
> think it is a mistake if applications have to do special things to
> recognise the OS.
> 
> It would be better IMO that the redhat-release package mimicked the RH
> version, and perhaps whatever other tests are generally will work
> equally well on WBL.  That way applications designed for RHEL should
> recognise WBL as RHEL and should generally work without
> problems... AND vice versa. This provides a larger audience to the
> software for both OSes.
> 
> However it would be handy to have an officially recognised way of
> checking if the OS is WBL, and determining its release.  That way all
> applications can consistently perform the same check and determine
> which version of WBL is being used.  Whether this is to check the
> output of rpm -q whitebox-release, or look at /etc/whitebox-release
> does not really matter it is the need for a consistent test which can
> be used if necessary.
> 
> Most other RPM based Linuxes do not appear to be consistent with this
> and this makes it complicated determining on which OS an application
> is running.
> 
> Simon
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