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With the last update of the Oracle Solaris 11 Express 2010.11 SRU released last week (5 July 2011), Oracle introduced the number of the repository update in the output of the uname command.

For Solaris up to version 10, the uname command just displayed the kernel revision number which is nothing but explicit, unless you are a intimate with the kernel PatchID.

If you wanted to be confident about the Update of the OS you are running, a better way was to look at the /etc/release file which is more accurate in term of operating system baseline information, because it was updated by a system update or by applying the Oracle Solaris Patch Update Bundle for a given Update.

It seems that things are now evolving, certainly because of the way IPS works. The uname now shows the exact update of the SRU, reflecting very precisely the update the system is running, but the /etc/release file is currently stuck at the build of the Solaris release, say snv_151a in the case of Oracle Solaris 11 Express 2010.11:

$ pkg search -p entire
PACKAGE                        PUBLISHER
pkg:/entire@0.5.11-0.151.0.1.8 solaris
$ uname -v
151.0.1.8
$ cat /etc/release
                      Oracle Solaris 11 Express snv_151a X86
     Copyright (c) 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.
                           Assembled 04 November 2010