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Subject: RE: how to detect if Windows or Linux is running?
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 08:33:07 -0500
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From: "Buchbinder, Barry \(NIH/NIAID\)" <BBuchbinder AT niaid DOT nih DOT gov>
To: "H. S." <hs DOT samix AT gmail DOT com>, <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
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H. S. wrote:
> Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) wrote:
>> H. S. wrote:
>> 
>>> Christopher Faylor wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 05:07:15PM -0500, H. S. wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>> 
>>>>> I have installed Cygwin on a Windows XP computer to get rsync and
>>>>> ssh running so that I can backup my important data on a Linux
>>>>> computer on my home LAN. The idea is to use rsync to make rolling
>>>>> backups of my Windows data automatically, say, once or twice a day
>>>>> and to retain last N backups (N most probably going to be 10~20).
>>>>> 
>>>>> But the problem I had not foreseen is that I dual boot this
>>>>> Windows machine between Windows XP and Debian. How should I
>>>>> gracefully let the rsync server know if this computer is running
>>>>> Linux or XP? 
>>>>> 
>>>>> I know that if the computer is running Linux, the rsync server
>>>>> will never find /cygdrive/... folders and will just quite with an
>>>>> error. But this is not 'clean', it will result in mails to the
>>>>> rsync server root about the error. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Suggestions?
> <SNIP>
>> 
>> 
>> Perhaps you could look for environmental variables that Windows sets
>> but Linux doesn't.  COMSPEC, windir, SystemDrive, SystemRoot,
>> ProgramFiles, CommonProgramFiles
>> 
> 
> er .. how can I do that using SSH and non-interactively?
> 
> thanks,
> ->HS

From other postings, I see that you've found the answer to your
question.  But for completeness in the archives ....

I don't use SSH so don't know what you are dealing with.  But in shell
scripts,
	if test -z "${NVAR}"
or
	if test ! -z "${VAR}"
can test whether VAR has a value.

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