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From: "Thomas Mueller" <mueller6722@twc.com>
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org 
Subject: Re: How to identify FreeBSD version on a different partition?
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> I can get my current booted system with
         
> % strings /boot/kernel/kernel|tail
> __page_fault.read
> __page_fault.write
> amd64
> @(#)FreeBSD 11.0-STABLE #0 r317545: Thu Apr 27 23:54:19 PDT 2017
> FreeBSD 11.0-STABLE #0 r317545: Thu Apr 27 23:54:19 PDT 2017
>     jack@upstairs.jack.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/UPSTAIRS
> FreeBSD clang version 4.0.0 (tags/RELEASE_400/final 297347) (based on
> LLVM 4.0.0)
> FreeBSD
> 11.0-STABLE
> UPSTAIRS

Thanks to Jack L., and Matthew Seaman too, that works.

It was non-obvious, I wouldn't have thought of it.

It works not only from active installation but from any OS installation that can read the FreeBSD partition.

I even tried it on a NetBSD kernel, but that did not show the version.

Tom