On Thu, 2010-12-16 at 02:26 -0600, James Velguth wrote: > sorry that suggestion did not work at all > > Really? What's in your /etc/issue, then? Mine says, "Ubuntu 10.10 \n \l" which does at least tell you the version. It's not as precise as lsb_release -rd, but it should at least give you the name and version number of your system's distro.