Getting the ESXi version from the console

Since ESXi is based on busybox, it is using ash a variation of sh (the classic bourne shell) called Almquist shell and most nxes use some form of bash a lot of things won’t work.

For instance, doesn’t support sh –version.

Luckily there are uname -mrs and (more elaborate) vmware -vl to get the version.

Note there is support busybox aliases so alias dir=”ls -laF” works, and you can define aliases for the version information too.

–jeroen

via:

• Some differences between BASH and TCSH (and web.archive.org).
• unix – How do I tell what type my shell is – Stack Overflow.
• various system shells.