Here's a question: is there a clear way to tell the difference between a FreeBSD system and a DragonFly system based on the TCP packets? (see forwarded mail below for why I'm asking.)
---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: Re: [Ticket#2008110410001492] www.shiningsilence.com reported operating system From: "Netcraft Webmaster" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, November 5, 2008 7:53 am To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Justin C. Sherrill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The hosting history for www.shiningsilence.com: > > http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?display=uptime&site=www.shiningsilence.com > > reports FreeBSD as the hosting operating system. It is actually running > DragonFly BSD, which forked from FreeBSD in 2003, so they probably look > very similar. > > I don't know a clear way to tell the difference, in part because I don't > know how you are identifying the operating system now. This is pretty > minor as these things go, but it would be nice to have it ID'd correctly, > as I'm a developer for DragonFly and want to show that I'm willing to eat > my own dog food, so to speak. We detect the operating system based on characteristics of the TCP packets received from the server when making HTTP connections. Probably the TCP/IP stack of DragonFly BSD is little changed from FreeBSD; it looks just like FreeBSD to us. If you're able to suggest any differences in the TCP stack, we could take a look at adding detection. The only thing that might be different by default is that DragonFly BSD apparently has random IP IDs by default (he says from just a brief skim of some release notes); but since that's available as an option for FreeBSD too, it doesn't seem like a good way to tell them apart. -- Colin Phipps Netcraft
