How to know if RHEL 8 is a server or workstation.

How do you know if your RHEL 8 installation is a server or a workstation. In previous version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux you could see what role the installation was by running cat /etc/redhat-release. So how do you find the set role of RHEL 8?

If you run cat /etc/redhat-release in RHEL 8 you will get back: Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.0 (Ootpa). It doesn’t show if it is server or workstation. This article will cover the basic steps needed to find this information.

The GUI method for finding the set role of RHEL 8

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 comes with Cockpit, which you can access your server via a web address such as http://rhel8.home.therootuser.com:9090. From there you can just to to Subscriptions to view your current role.

Under System Purpose, we see our Server Level is set to Self-Support. The Usage is Development/Test, and the Role is Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server.

Using the CLI

For those who would rather use the CLI, you can find out if RHEL 8 is a server or workstation with subscription-manager.

# subscription-manager role

This shows that we are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server.

# subscription-manager usage

We see above that our server usage is set for Development/Test

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.