Mac Server or PC Server? How can I tell.

[Longjohns]

Recently, our company purchased a Mac server. That was great news for us considering we all use macs.

Long story short is there a way on our end to “Ping” the server and have it tell us if is a Mac server or a PC server?

Any ideas would be welcome.

[Longjohns]

OK, its been a few days.
So you guys are saying that none of you knows a way to do this?

BUMP

[nixgeek]

As far as ping, there is no way to tell. You might have to use a tool like nmap to determine what OS is running on said server. I am running a version of nmap for mac OS X that was written in Cocoa which I downloaded from sourceforge.net. I can scan the ports of any computer that I need to in order to indentify what machine it is and what ports are open on it.

[symphonix]

I know that at work I often Telnet or SSH to a server (even if I don't have an account) just to see if its a Sun, AIX, Windows or Unix server. Around 50% of the servers I run into at work will respond with the OS before displaying the logon prompt.

[billbaloney]

nmap's system detection functionality is second-to-none, and there are several methods of installing it.

1. You can install nmap through Fink: http://fink.sourceforge.net/

You can use the FinkCommander GUI to make it even easier: http://finkcommander.sourceforge.net/

2. You can install from source: http://www.insecure.org/nmap/install/inst-macosx.html

3. You can install the Cocoa GUI for nmap: http://sourceforge.net/projects/nmapfe-osx

Note that for some or all of these -- definitely for options 1 and 2 -- you'll need Dev Tools installed.