Does Proxmox have its own `/etc/os-release` file?

[AveryFreeman]

Hi, I am trying to figure out if Proxmox should have its own `/etc/os-release` file separate and apart from Debian

I found this thread: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/s...-debian-while-efi-boot-dir-is-proxmox.138082/ but it didn't quite answer my question, so I am posting a new thread to ask

My system is Proxmox VE 8.2. `/etc/os-release`:

PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="12"
VERSION="12 (bookworm)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

Conversely, `ls /boot/efi/EFI`:

BOOT  HP  Linux  proxmox  systemd

I am not using secure boot, so the name mismatch doesn't appear to be an issue, but I'd expect if the ID is `os-release` is `ID=debian`, `/boot/efi/EFI/$INITRD_FOLDER` should be named the same as `os-release:ID`, right?

If Proxmox is a distro separate and apart from Debian, it should have its own release file, right? E.g.:

PRETTY_NAME="Proxmox VE GNU/Linux 8.2 (bookworm)"
NAME="Proxmox VE"
VERSION_ID="8.2"
VERSION="8.2 (bookworm)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm
ID=proxmox
HOME_URL="https://www.proxmox.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://forum.proxmox.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/"

Would this cause issues with package management using direct debian repos?

 

[t.lamprecht]

No, currently we re-use the /etc/os-release file from Debian.

But there were some development discussions about shipping our own base-files package, which provides this file among a few other things, but there are no real big benefits of doing so, and it would need to be done on a major release to allow for tools parsing this and other files to have a clean break in the values reported.

If Proxmox is a distro separate and apart from Debian, it should have its own release file, right? E.g.:

We currently build on top of Debian, among other things as it provides a big benefit for users to be able to use any Debian package, so there isn't a clear-cut as with some other, very separate Debian derivatives.

Your proposed file content is missing at least an ID_LIKE=debian entry, and the (bookworm) in the version seems a bit off.

Would this cause issues with package management using direct debian repos?

It definitively can have some fallout, how much and how big the impact is hard to say, so this is definitively not a decision to make lightly and, as mentioned above, probably only fine to do on a major release.