Oracle Linux not always recognized properly

[wiggin15]

I have several versions of Oracle Linux, but distro doesn't recognize all of them correctly.

Oracle Linux 5.11

host-ci087 (Oracle 5.11) ➜  ~ python -c "import distro; print distro.linux_distribution()"
(u'EnterpriseEnterpriseServer', u'5.11', u'Carthage')

host-ci087 (Oracle 5.11) ➜  ~ lsb_release -a
LSB Version:	:core-4.0-ia32:core-4.0-noarch:graphics-4.0-ia32:graphics-4.0-noarch:printing-4.0-ia32:printing-4.0-noarch
Distributor ID:	EnterpriseEnterpriseServer
Description:	Enterprise Linux Enterprise Linux Server release 5.11 (Carthage)
Release:	5.11
Codename:	Carthage

I guess we should fix NORMALIZED_LSB_ID by adding 'enterpriseenterpriseserver': 'oracle'.
I think it has always been EnterpriseEnterpriseServer and not EnterpriseEnterprise like we already have in NORMALIZED_LSB_ID, but I don't have older versions to test against.

Oracle Linux 6.1

host-ci089 (Oracle 6.1) ➜  ~  python -c "import distro; print distro.linux_distribution()"
(u'Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server', u'6.1', u'Santiago')

host-ci089 (Oracle 6.1) ➜  ~  lsb_release -a
command not found: lsb_release

host-ci089 (Oracle 6.1) ➜  ~  cat /etc/oracle-release
Oracle Linux Server release 6.1

lsb_release is gone and /etc/os-release isn't there either but we should be able to identify that this is Oracle by reading /etc/oracle-release. The problem is that the files /etc/centos-release and /etc/redhat-release are there as well, and take precedence when sorted.

host-ci089 (Oracle 6.1) ➜  ~  cat /etc/centos-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.1 (Santiago)
host-ci089 (Oracle 6.1) ➜  ~  cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.1 (Santiago)

Oracle Linux 6.10 and 7.x
These versions work fine by reading /etc/os-release. One remark though: the comment on NORMALIZED_OS_ID says ol means Oracle Enterprise Linux, but this old name was dropped since Oracle Linux 5 (including) so the versions that have /etc/os-release and the ol ID are already called by the new name, "Oracle Linux", and are not "Oracle Enterprise Linux".

[wiggin15]

The lsb_release ID in Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 seems to have been EnterpriseEnterpriseAS (presumably, after "RedHat Enterprise AS" - "AS" apparently meaning "Advanced Server"). I saw some bash scripts trying to match the lsb ID with EnterpriseEnterprise*, maybe this is where the original constant came from.

[rcorre]

The docs suggest that oracle linux will return "oracle" for ID, but I'm getting ol on oracle 7:

>>> import distro
>>> distro.linux_distribution()
(u'Oracle Linux Server', u'7.8', '')
>>> distro.linux_distribution(False)
(u'ol', u'7.8', '')

# uname -a
Linux oracle-7.6 4.14.35-1902.301.1.el7uek.x86_64 #2 SMP Tue Mar 31 16:50:32 PDT 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Do the docs need to be updated? I'm not 100% sure I understand @wiggin15's comment about the name being dropped, or what the expected output is here.

[wiggin15]

@rcorre to clarify my comment, Oracle renamed their product from "Oracle Enterprise Linux" to "Oracle Linux" since version 5 (including). The code included a comment next to the string ol that said this refers to "Oracle Enterprise Linux" even though it referred to the new name, "Oracle Linux". This comment was fixed in #250. In any case, distro should return oracle for all versions. This ticket is still open because Oracle Linux 6.1 still returns the wrong information (distro will think it is redhat). There may be other versions that have problems, but if I recall correctly I never saw this behavior. Could be something new in version 7.8.

[rcorre]

Should I open a separate ticket for 7 returning ol instead of oracle?
I also just realized that uname says 7.6 but distro shows 7.8 🤔 . Not a problem for my use case but it is a little weird ...

[wiggin15]

As far as I can tell, Oracle 7.8 is still in beta, so this might explain problems like uname reporting a wrong version. Maybe it's better to wait for GA to see if distro still reports ol incorrectly?
(I'll let @nir0s decide whether this needs a separate ticket or not)

[HorlogeSkynet]

Hi @rcorre, is this issue still experienced on your end ? Can we close here ?
Please also note that distro.linux_distribution() has been formally deprecated in distro v1.6.0 (see #263 for rationale). Although, I don't get why ol id was not normalized as oracle in your case.

Bye 👋

[rcorre]

Hi @HorlogeSkynet -- I don't have an Oracle machine handy to test this at the moment, but you can feel free to close. We just added a mapping on top of distro to normalize things:

{
    "redhat": "Red Hat",
    "rhel": "Red Hat",  # https://github.com/nir0s/distro/issues/36
    "oracle": "Oracle Linux Server",
    "ol": "Oracle Linux Server",  # https://github.com/nir0s/distro/issues/239
    "amazon": "Amazon Linux",
    "amzn": "Amazon Linux",  # https://github.com/nir0s/distro/issues/252
}

[HorlogeSkynet]

By "we" you mean your team on a local copy of distro ? If so, would you mind propose your changes as a PR over here ?
Thanks for your response 🙇

[rcorre]

By "we" you mean your team on a local copy of distro ? If so, would you mind propose your changes as a PR over here ? Thanks for your response 🙇

I'm happy to propose a PR if it is valuable, but it really isn't that clever. We just pass the output of distro through a dict that covers up some of the inconsistencies from known issues (e.g. mapping "oracle" and "ol" to the same value). And by "we" I really mean a team I worked on almost two years ago, so I'm not that up to date with how well it is working ;)

[HorlogeSkynet]

Fair enough, thanks again for your feedback. We'll be closing here then, one should re-open this if they think it's still an issue nowadays.
Bye 👋