From: Luke Kanies <luke@...>
Date: 2006-11-17T05:31:36+09:00
Subject: Re: finding which OS?

On Nov 16, 2006, at 3:17 AM, dc wrote:

> hi -
>
> is there a way to find which OS Ruby is running on?

Facter[1] does this and much more:

luke@midden(0) $ irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'facter'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> Facter.value(:operatingsystem)
=> "Darwin"
irb(main):003:0> Facter.macaddress
=> "00:0a:95:96:5f:64"
irb(main):004:0> Facter.to_hash.each do |p, v| next if p =~ /key/;  
puts "%s => %s" % [p, v] end
kernel => Darwin
rubysitedir => /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8
operatingsystemrelease => 8.8.0
hardwaremodel => Power Macintosh
ipaddress => 192.168.0.4
kernelrelease => 8.8.0
fqdn => midden.madstop.com
ps => ps -auxwww
domain => madstop.com
rubyversion => 1.8.2
puppetversion => 0.20.1
hostname => midden
facterversion => 1.3.3
operatingsystem => Darwin
macaddress => 00:0a:95:96:5f:64
home => /Users/luke

Note that Facter distinguishes the kernel from the operatingsystem;  
you'll correctly get 'Debian' or 'Fedora' as your operating system,  
for instance, not 'Linux'.

Also, FWIW, Facter is pretty darn easy to extend:

Facter.add(:myfact) do setcode { ...find your data } end

1 - http://reductivelabs.com/projects/facter

-- 
Luke Kanies
http://madstop.com | http://reductivelabs.com | 615-594-8199