How to detect the OS from a Bash script?

bash os-detection
csexton picture csexton · Dec 26, 2008 · Viewed 317.3k times · Source

I would like to keep my .bashrc and .bash_login files in version control so that I can use them between all the computers I use. The problem is I have some OS specific aliases so I was looking for a way to determine if the script is running on Mac OS X, Linux or Cygwin.

What is the proper way to detect the operating system in a Bash script?

Answer

Timmmm picture Timmmm · Dec 21, 2011

I think the following should work. I'm not sure about win32 though.

if [[ "$OSTYPE" == "linux-gnu"* ]]; then
        # ...
elif [[ "$OSTYPE" == "darwin"* ]]; then
        # Mac OSX
elif [[ "$OSTYPE" == "cygwin" ]]; then
        # POSIX compatibility layer and Linux environment emulation for Windows
elif [[ "$OSTYPE" == "msys" ]]; then
        # Lightweight shell and GNU utilities compiled for Windows (part of MinGW)
elif [[ "$OSTYPE" == "win32" ]]; then
        # I'm not sure this can happen.
elif [[ "$OSTYPE" == "freebsd"* ]]; then
        # ...
else
        # Unknown.
fi

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