Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!nems!mimsy!mojo!stripes
From: stripes@eng.umd.edu (Joshua Osborne)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Determining EXACTLY whose server you're talking to
Message-ID: <1990Jun11.094038.13239@eng.umd.edu>
Date: 11 Jun 90 09:40:38 GMT
References: <14201@diamond.BBN.COM>
Sender: news@eng.umd.edu (The News System)
Distribution: comp
Organization: College of Engineering, Maryversity of Uniland, College Park
Lines: 40

In article <14201@diamond.BBN.COM> mlandau@bbn.com (Matthew Landau) writes:
[...]
>Knowing this, we can program defensively by having our applications 
>detect that they're running with such a server and either disable 
>certain features, or implement them in a different (i.e., worse) way.
>We can do this IF we can tell what server is on the other end, but
>we need to know very specifically what server we're talking to -- the
>OpenWindows server running on the 386i, for instance, does NOT show
>the same bug, nor does the MIT server running on a Sun-4.  It's ONLY
>the combination of MIT R4 and the 386i that proves deadly, and there
>doesn't seem to be any offically blessed way to get that much 
>information back.  (All MIT servers seem to have the ServerVendor set
>to "MIT X Consortium", for instance -- you can't really tell one MIT
>server from another.)

Or you could ask your friendly nameserver, not knowing the enviroment you
work in I don't know if you keep your HINFO records up to date, but...

nslookup
> set querytype=HINFO
> mojo
Server:  abyss.eng.umd.edu
Address:  128.8.133.6

mojo.eng.umd.edu        CPU=SUN-3/50    OS=UNIX
> frob.eng.umd.edu
Server:  abyss.eng.umd.edu
Address:  128.8.133.6

frob.eng.umd.edu        CPU=SUN-4/60    OS=UNIX


That looks like what you want to know, 'tho I'm not shure how uniformly people
format that field both MIT & U of Maryland seem to do it the same...
-- 
           stripes@eng.umd.edu          "Security for Unix is like
      Josh_Osborne@Real_World,The          Mutitasking for MS-DOS"
      "The dyslexic porgramer"                  - Kevin Lockwood
"Don't try to change C into some nice, safe, portable programming language
 with all sharp edges removed, pick another language."  - John Limpert