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Fen
Asked: 2024-09-20 05:01:46 +0800 CST

How do I know what version of Ubuntu I have if I can't log in or get to tty?

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I have a problem where I can't log into the system.

It freezes when I enter the right details.

I can't get to a tty or terminal either.

When I press Ctrl+Alt+F1 a blank screen shows up, and if I press any key it returns me to the log in screen.

Ctrl+Alt+Fx (where x is any number) also doesn't work.

Alt and T during bootup let me stay in the bootup code but again when I type anything it sends me to the login screen.

I thought I installed Ubuntu 23.04 when I first (recently) installed it. But how do I check this?

I realise it might have updated (I was running updates before it stopped working) so it could be 24.04. Which would make sense cause when I tried to install 24.04 it didn't work.

upgrade

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Systemd-based distros (though this doesn't apply only to systemd-based distros) store much information about the current release in /etc/os-release (which is one of the files parsed by lsb_release), optionally including (Ubuntu does), among others, for example, a VERSION_ID entry:

    A lower-case string (mostly numeric, no spaces or other characters outside of 0–9, a–z, ".", "_" and "-") identifying the operating system version, excluding any OS name information or release code name, and suitable for processing by scripts or usage in generated filenames. This field is optional.

    and a PRETTY_NAME entry:

    A pretty operating system name in a format suitable for presentation to the user. May or may not contain a release code name or OS version of some kind, as suitable. If not set, a default of "PRETTY_NAME="Linux"" may be used

    % grep '^VERSION_ID=' /etc/os-release
VERSION_ID="24.04"
% grep '^PRETTY_NAME=' /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS"

    So you may:

    1. Boot from a Live ISO
    2. Mount the system disk's root partition somewhere (e.g. sudo mount /dev/sdXY /mnt, replacing /dev/sdXY with the right block device for your root partition as listed by, say, lsblk)
    3. Run 
      grep '^VERSION_ID=' /mnt/etc/os-release
      to print the VERSION_ID entry, or 
      grep '^PRETTY_NAME=' /mnt/etc/os-release
      to print the PRETTY_NAME entry

    Note that on Ubuntu 24.04.1 at least the PRETTY_NAME entry contains the specific point release version ("24.04.1", unlike VERSION_ID, which just contains "24.04"), so that's another reason to prefer PRETTY_NAME over VERSION_ID when not parsing the file to script stuff.

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