I think the way we want to do this is actually to use the `lsb_release` command and `case` statement:

```bash
case `lsb_release -is` in
Ubuntu)
  LOG_LOCATION="/var/log/syslog"
  ;;
*)
  LOG_LOCATION="/var/log/messages"
  ;;
esac
```

This is one of the cases where Serverspec will be useful as it will have a standard way of detecting which OS we are on.