How to check CentOS version number you are using

“How to show CentOS version?”, – might be a trivial question, but we often ask our customers about that when we got quotation for our services. Let’s get over the answer and cleat all the details about how to get CentOS version number.

Releases – Versions – Numbers – Kernels

How to get CentOS version number

There are several commands that should be executed in your server’s terminal. You should access server via ssh and execute the following:

cat /etc/centos-release

An alternative commands to check CentOS version:

cat /etc/redhat-release

and

cat /etc/system-release

and

cat /etc/os-release

The output should give you something similar to:

CentOS Linux release 7.4.1708 (Core)

NAME="CentOS Linux"
VERSION="7 (Core)"
ID="centos"
ID_LIKE="rhel fedora"
VERSION_ID="7"
PRETTY_NAME="CentOS Linux 7 (Core)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;31"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:centos:centos:7"
HOME_URL="https://www.centos.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.centos.org/"

CENTOS_MANTISBT_PROJECT="CentOS-7"
CENTOS_MANTISBT_PROJECT_VERSION="7"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="centos"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION="7"

NAME="CentOS Linux"

VERSION="7 (Core)"

ID="centos"

ID_LIKE="rhel fedora"

VERSION_ID="7"

PRETTY_NAME="CentOS Linux 7 (Core)"

ANSI_COLOR="0;31"

CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:centos:centos:7"

HOME_URL="https://www.centos.org/"

BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.centos.org/"

CENTOS_MANTISBT_PROJECT="CentOS-7"

CENTOS_MANTISBT_PROJECT_VERSION="7"

REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="centos"

REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION="7"

Let me explain how to read CentOS version number and what this number means. You can see that you’re using CentOS release 7 (this is major version) and 4 (this is minor version), third part 1708 is added for 7th version only and indicates that the source code of this release is based on dates from August 2017.

Please keep in mind that you should always consider using the latest stable version of CentOS to have new features and cover security leaks.

How to get CentOS kernel version

If you want to check which kernel is used on your server, this command will help you:

uname -r

The output of the command should be similar to:

3.10.0-693.17.1.el7.x86_64

The output displays following keys:

– 3 – Kernel Version
– 10 – Major Revision
– 0 – Minor Revision
– 17.1.el7 – Fix/Revision Detail

uname command can also give the following information:

-a, --all
print all information, in the following order, except omit -p and -i if unknown:

-s, --kernel-name
print the kernel name

-n, --nodename
print the network node hostname

-r, --kernel-release
print the kernel release

-v, --kernel-version
print the kernel version

-m, --machine
print the machine hardware name

-p, --processor
print the processor type or "unknown"

-i, --hardware-platform
print the hardware platform or "unknown"

-o, --operating-system
print the operating system

--help display this help and exit

--version
output version information and exit

-a, --all

print all information, in the following order, except omit -p and -i if unknown:

-s, --kernel-name

print the kernel name

-n, --nodename

print the network node hostname

-r, --kernel-release

print the kernel release

-v, --kernel-version

print the kernel version

-m, --machine

print the machine hardware name

-p, --processor

print the processor type or "unknown"

-i, --hardware-platform

print the hardware platform or "unknown"

-o, --operating-system

print the operating system

--help display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

Conclusion

Now you can easily find CentOS version and its kernel version. Also you are able to read the output and understand it. I would like to pay attention that you might have another version of CentOS and version in my example can be not the latest and maybe even outdated. Please do not hesitate to contact us to check that you are running latest version of CentOS server.

Looking forward to comments and questions!