How to get kernel version without arch

Question

I am looking for a command that will return the kernel build without the architecture.

uname -r returns: 2.6.32-279.22.1.el6.x86_64 but I only need 2.6.32-279.22.1.el6

I can do this using a regex and chomp everything past the last dot

Answer 1

Given that regex can be used, you can match the string against ^(.*)\.[^.]*$ and take the first capture group.

((.*)\..* will generally also work, with "greedy" quantifiers, but cf. a reference for your regex engine.)

Answer 2

I'm not sure how portable it is but you could do the following --

uname -r | sed s/\.`arch`//

example -

$ uname -r

2.6.32-358.6.2.el6.x86_64

$ uname -r | sed s/\.`arch`//

2.6.32-358.6.2.el6

Answer 3

You can't avoid it. During the kernel build, with the help of "Local version - append to the kernel release" (http://lxr.linux.no/linux+*/init/Kconfig#L56) configuration option these extra "el6.x86_64" are set and mainly to track build and release versions.

So, a possible workaround is like below:

           uname -a | awk '{print $3}'