Perhaps this is nit-picking but there is a syntax error in SL's /etc/redhat-release: Scientific Linux SL Release 4.0 (Beryllium) According to the man page lsb_release(1), "release" must be lower case: > The required line style is: > "Distributor release x.x (Codename)" It could be significant for a script trying to work out what distribution it is running on. Cheers, Morten