Mac OS X Server: Determining Which Version Is Installed

This article explains how to check which version of Mac OS X Server is installed on a computer.
There are several ways to determine which version of Mac OS X Server is installed, or whether a specific patch has been applied successfully.

About this Mac

If you are running Mac OS X Server 10.x, select 'About this Mac' from the Apple Menu to find out the version.


Console Window
A direct way of verifying the version of Mac OS X Server is to open the Console from the Tools Menu within Workspace Manager. Besides displaying system messages related to the opening of applications and the initialization of various services, the Console writes the currently installed Mac OS X Server version at login.

Listed below are the readouts in the Console screen with each version of the OS:


Installer Receipts
Alternatively, locate the package used to install the patch (in /Local/Library/Receipts/ ), double-click it to open the Installer.app, and examine the status in the window that opens. You may also verify the installation of each component of the patch directly after running the Installer by looking at the log file that is created in the process.

uname command
A third method is to open a terminal window and type the uname command. This command takes a variety of arguments, but if the -a argument is used, the command outputs all available information to the terminal screen, including hardware name, node name, operating system name, operating system release and operating system version.

For example, here is the printout received from issuing uname -a on the current version 1.2:
The Kernel Release will vary depending on the version of Mac OS X Server that is installed as the following chart shows.

Mac OS X Server version
Kernel Release
version
1.0
5.3
1.0-1
5.4
1.0-2
5.5
1.2
5.6

Mac OS X Server 10.x returns "Darwin" with no version information. Therefore, this is not a way to determine which version of Mac OS X Server 10.x is installed.

For further details on the uname command, please refer to the online manual page.

Note: To find the most recent version of this software, please visit Apple Software Downloads at http://www.info.apple.com/support/downloads.html
Published Date: Feb 17, 2012