Re: 2.1.19p1 misidentifies if server is VMWare ESX

[Chris Edillon]

On Fri, 2006-03-10 at 22:27 -0500, Scott Lackey wrote:
> Since VMware ESX is an operating system, I would not judge a server's
> group membership by the presence of an rpm, rather than by the kernel,
> but thats just me.
> 
  there is a VMnix kernel RPM.  :)

> You are right, uname does not output what I stated in the previous
> email, it reports Linux and the vmnix kernel. 
> "VMware ESX Server 2.1.2 
> Kernel 2.4.9-vmnix2 on an i686"
> is actually what is in /etc/issue and I imagine what cfengine is
> looking for to determine if it is an ESX server, and what version.
> Thanks for pointing that out, I was a little hasty. 
> 
  for some strange reason, the default rc.local file for ESX
overwrites /etc/issue at every boot with a message similar to
the above.  perhaps this was the original impetus for using
/etc/issue to determine the OS type (that and IDClasses() uses
OS-specific files for the other classes it sets), but i agree
that the presence of the VMnix kernel would be the best test
however it is accomplished.  /etc/issue could be referenced
for the version of stock ESX installs, but this could easily
be modified by the end user (as it sounds like jamie does on
all of his machines).

chris