Finding out the glibc version

There are four ways to find the glibc version that is installed in the system.

1. Open a terminal and run

/lib/libc.so.6

Which should give an output like

GNU C Library (Debian EGLIBC 2.11.3-2) stable release version 2.11.3, by Roland McGrath et al. Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Compiled by GNU CC version 4.4.5. Compiled on a Linux 2.6.32 system on 2011-12-17. Available extensions: crypt add-on version 2.1 by Michael Glad and others GNU Libidn by Simon Josefsson Native POSIX Threads Library by Ulrich Drepper et al BIND-8.2.3-T5B For bug reporting instructions, please see: <http://www.debian.org/Bugs/>.

Indicating the glibc version is 2.11.3.

2. The second method is by writing a program for it.

glibc_version.c

#include <stdio.h>#include <gnu/libc-version.h>int main (void) { puts (gnu_get_libc_version ()); return 0; }

Compile it

cc glibc_version.c -o glibc_version

and execute it

./glibc_version

output :

2.11.3

Note: You might get a different output based on your version.

3. Open a terminal and run the command

$ getconf GNU_LIBC_VERSION

output :

glibc 2.11.3

4. The fourth rather crude way which would work if are running debian based systems is to open the synaptic package manager and go to the package libc-bin and see the installed version number in front of it.