How to tell OS (Win/Mac/Unix)?

toplay

Does anyone know how to tell within PHP if the web server is running under Windows, Mac or Linux/Unix?

I know about the $_SERVER['SERVER_SOFTWARE'] field. Is that the only way? and what kind of values could it contain? In other words, how to positively identify one OS from another?

Thanks for the help.

dalecosp

Most real operating systems are POSIX compliant, so a call to uname(1) will probably get you there. Mac OSX is supposed to do it, but I don't know what it'll return.

<?php

$os=system('uname -s");

$compliant=array(
     "Linux",
     "FreeBSD",
     "OpenBSD",
     "NetBSD");      // Mac OS X ??

if (!in_array($os, $compliant)) {
     // probably Windows
}

I suppose to detect Windows, you could do ` if (is_dir("C:\Windows")) ' ....

You may need to figure on adding a whole bunch of the UNIXes to that array, too...

dalecosp

Me again ....

I checked on a WinXP system ... doesn't seem that "uname" is there. I guess you could add a return value variable to the system() call (see the docs for [man]system[/man]) and assume that if it returns false, it's Windows.

You might wanna find an NT or XP (Pro) system, though, before you do it for sure ... I used my wife's XPH machine...

Weedpacket

The server signature in the $_SERVER array might also say - depending on the server software and whether or not the administrator is obscuring it. There's no standardised format that I'm aware of though, so picking it out might be a little tricky (though if it starts with "ISS" that kinda narrows the field...). It could at least serve as a confirmation in the case of Windows if uname() fails to give joy.

toplay

Thanks dalecosp and Weedpacket. You pointed me in the right direction.

Or for Windows maybe use: $os = @shell_exec("ver");

<?PHP

//$os = @system("uname -s");    // Outputs to the browser
$os = @exec("uname -s");        // Doesn't output to the browser

echo '<br>OS returned is: ', $os, '<br>';

$compliant=array(
     "Linux",
     "FreeBSD",
     "OpenBSD",
     "NetBSD");

if (in_array($os, $compliant)) {
     echo "Is Unix/Linux etc.";
}
else
if (is_dir("C:\\Windows")) {

 echo "Is windows";

} else {

 echo "Maybe Mac";
}

?>

On my server this outputs:

OS returned is: Linux
Is Unix/Linux etc.

Thank you all.