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How to determine type of server on a remote machine


I have a virtual hosting of my Rails web-site and i need to determine type of server, that acts as front-end.

They say, that Apache is not used as a front-end server, but i need to check it somehow.

Is this possible ? Maybe some terminal command ?


Solution

  • If I understand your question correction, you are trying to determine the type of web server that is serving your files, correct? If so, use a tool like Fiddler (a stand-alone freeware app) or FireBug (free plug-in for FireFox) to view the HTTP responses coming from the server. In most cases you will see an HTTP header called "Server" that contains a description of the server being used. For example (from cnn.com):

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 04:24:46 GMT
    Expires: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 05:21:59 GMT
    Last-Modified: Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:42:35 GMT
    Cache-Control: max-age=3600
    Content-Type: application/x-javascript
    Accept-Ranges: bytes
    **Server: Apache**
    Content-Length: 1907
    

    ...or for another example, from brinkster.com:

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 04:28:02 GMT
    **Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0**
    Set-Cookie: BrinksterM1=2; HttpOnly
    X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
    Cache-Control: private
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
    Content-Length: 44943
    

    You may or may not get specific versions, etc. of the server--it depends on what information the server provides--but it would be a very quick, free way way to check and would probably be the first step I would take.