diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'man/os-release.xml')
| -rw-r--r-- | man/os-release.xml | 38 |
1 files changed, 29 insertions, 9 deletions
diff --git a/man/os-release.xml b/man/os-release.xml index c1dd62f715..11443638e5 100644 --- a/man/os-release.xml +++ b/man/os-release.xml @@ -49,13 +49,15 @@ <refsynopsisdiv> <para><filename>/etc/os-release</filename></para> + <para><filename>/usr/lib/os-release</filename></para> </refsynopsisdiv> <refsect1> <title>Description</title> - <para>The <filename>/etc/os-release</filename> file - contains operating system identification data.</para> + <para>The <filename>/etc/os-release</filename> and + <filename>/usr/lib/os-release</filename> files contain + operating system identification data.</para> <para>The basic file format of <filename>os-release</filename> is a newline-separated @@ -78,20 +80,38 @@ strings. Lines beginning with "#" shall be ignored as comments.</para> - <para><filename>/etc/os-release</filename> contains - data that is defined by the operating system vendor - and should not be changed by the administrator.</para> + <para>The file <filename>/etc/os-release</filename> + takes precedence over + <filename>/usr/lib/os-release</filename>. Applications + should check for the former, and exclusively use its + data if it exists, and only fall back to + <filename>/usr/lib/os-release</filename> if it is + missing. Applications should not read data from both + files at the same + time. <filename>/usr/lib/os-release</filename> is the + recommended place to store OS release information as + part of vendor trees. Frequently + <filename>/etc/os-release</filename> is simply a + symlink to <filename>/usr/lib/os-release</filename>, + to provide compatibility with applications only + looking at <filename>/etc</filename>.</para> + + <para><filename>os-release</filename> contains data + that is defined by the operating system vendor and + should generally not be changed by the + administrator.</para> <para>As this file only encodes names and identifiers it should not be localized.</para> - <para>The file <filename>/etc/os-release</filename> might - be a symlink to another file, but it is important that + <para>The <filename>/etc/os-release</filename> and + <filename>/usr/lib/os-release</filename> files might + be symlinks to other files, but it is important that the file is available from earliest boot on, and hence must be located on the root file system.</para> <para>For a longer rationale for - <filename>/etc/os-release</filename> please refer to + <filename>os-release</filename> please refer to the <ulink url="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/os-release">Announcement of <filename>/etc/os-release</filename></ulink>.</para> </refsect1> @@ -100,7 +120,7 @@ <title>Options</title> <para>The following OS identifications parameters may be set using - <filename>/etc/os-release</filename>:</para> + <filename>os-release</filename>:</para> <variablelist> |