Identify if Alma System is a Server or Workstation

General Discussion & Chat
1

Is there a way to tell whether a system is a server or workstation? Version is 9.4.

2

What do those terms mean to you? If “server” is a system that runs a “service”, then every system is a server.

1 Like
3

Generally a workstation is running a GUI and a server is headless, so you could run:

systemctl status gdm3

systemctl is-active gdm3

Or more commonly (e.g. in CIS benchmarks, STIG etc):

rpm -qa | grep xorg-x11-server-common

dnf list --installed xorg-x11-server-common

1 Like
4 
systemctl get-default

Should return multi-user.target on headless, and graphical.target if boot starts GUI.

3 Likes
5

It is true that servers generally run headless and workstations do not; however, that is not a solid fact. Granted it is advisable for security reasons.

Also, by definition, as @jlehtone stated, if it offers a service like ftpd, web services, Directory Services, etc…; then the machine is a server.

However, you might be referring to executing the following on your machine to determine:

cat /etc/redhat-release

On a RHEL server, you would see an indication of Workstation or Server; however, on ALMA Linux there is no such strings in the output.

I hope that helps.

1 Like