How can I know the operating system of a device

Question

If I know the device's model or vendor. Is there any direct way by which I can know the operating system of this device (eg through the device driver or something like that? ). For example, I will quote an answer for a previous question I asked in: What is the difference between the firmware and the operating system?

Someone have said:

Hardware vendors commonly use a derivative of linux (eg Cisco IOS)

How can I know this. I know a name for one cisco device but I do not have the device and I need to check what is its operating system (even if it is widely known that it is Linux, I need to check this myself). How can I get this piece of information ? I checked the companies site and google, and I can not find any answer.

Answer 1

If the terms of the GNU Public License are complied with, it should be reasonably clear if a device is using any GPL code, including Linux, moreover the source code should be available too.

If the device uses an OS that is not open source, then even if the information were available to you, it is unlikely to be particularly useful except perhaps in respect to applying manufacturer's firmware updates.

Linux is by no means that common in embedded systems in general. It is commonly used in certain types of device, such as routers, STB's and NAS's. Often these devices have a web-server interface through which version information is usually available, but there is no common method of accessing this information, you'd have to access the particular URL for the device and parse the HTML.

Answer 2

You need a serial cable to hack into the device or read the binary from the flash and examine the hexdump. I have a STB in my home. The provider doesn't reveal the OS. There are competitors out there who need such information to take you down.