Thanks for the edifying responses. I will try out these things and figure out if I have enough to solve my problem.
What this script does is use take the output of vmstat to report idle cpu cycles (or memory stuff, etc.) over a period specified by a parameter, all the better to be a plugin for a monitoring service. Basically it parses the output of the command, runs through a whole bunch of regex to discard everything not required and then reports the info. Everything I had checked out that responded "Linux" to a uname command had identical output for vmstat until FC3. FC3 seems to use similar output to BSD. I wrote a simple if-then loop to try to determine which regex function to use, but it obivously isn't working under fc3. I could post the script if you'd like to look at it, but I was a little bit afraid of looking like a total newbie. I don't get an excuse to write code very often so it is probably quite lame. B) I will have a look at platform and see what I can come up with. Delving into libraries seems a little bit much for my current level (though lots of fun). Thanks for the responses! googleboy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
