Michael Mansour responded to Ping:

|>      I'm wondering if there should be a /etc/scientific-release file
|> instead of /etc/redhat-release?
|
|I doubt this needs to be done since in effect, 3rd party RHEL distributions
|are still technically RHEL distributions, and they all have that commonality.
|Although you'll find within that file, their respective distribution will
|correctly be listed.
|
|Keeping this the way it is also allows third party developers to correctly
|identify which distribution is running, as many currently use this file for
|this purpose.

At the same time, it would be handy to have
something for SL.

How about a [symbolic?] link to /etc/SciLinux-release
(or whatever)?  That leaves the redhat stuff in place,
which may be crucial for those 3rd party apps, but
provides an easy test for SL as well.

|>      Another problem is that when I upgrade a red hat 9 box to SL 
|> 3.0.4, the /etc/issue file still shows "Red Hat Linux release 9 
|> (Shrike)" instead of "Scientific Linux SL Release 3.0.4 (SL)".  This 
|> may cause an incorrect OS detection when building rpms on that SL box.
|
|>From memory under RH9, the /etc/issue file is created via an rc script. Within
|SL, /etc/issue is provided from within the sl-release RPM package.
|
|You may want to check that this SL package is installed. You may also like to
|check whether you have any ".rpmnew" files located on your system from the
|upgrade. Maybe also whether the rc script from RH9 which creates the
|/etc/issue file is still running or not (actually if it is, then it should
|write over that fileon boot). Lastly, you can edit the file manually to:

Maybe what we *really* need is a list of places
that "RedHat" still shows up, and whether each
of these is static text, generated from a shell
script, or what.  Then whoever needs to to change
it for their network can do so.