Devs: Shoutcast DNAS and lame brower sniffing

[blahblahbling]

The Shoutcast DNAS employs browser sniffing when accessing its admin page (http://SERVER:8000/admin.cgi?pass=PASSWORD), and it seems to completely block browsers that don't have 'mozilla' in their user-agent string.

Being an Opera user, this is really inconvenient, and it means I have to pretend to be IE whenever I want to get the admin page.

I understand there is a need for the server to distinguish between browsers and players, but surely there's a better solution than to sniff for, and block, any non-IE/Moz based browser? If not, then at the very least, it could allow Opera access by looking for 'opera' in the user-agent...

Shoutcast, otherwise, is a great product. But browser sniffing under any circumstances is undesirable, and Opera (and probably other non-IE/Moz) users shouldn't have to spoof their user-agent just to access their shoutcast server.

Thanks for your time.

[DJ AmPs]

Interesting, thanks for the heads up.

[Death Reaper]

They let IE in? If anything they should sniff out and block IE and display a "GET FireFox You Moron" page

Regards,

[MegaRock]

I can access it just fine using the Lynx browser which is a text based Linux web browser. Maybe it's just a problem with Opera because I know Lynx isn't even close to a Mozilla browser.

[blahblahbling]

Originally posted by MegaRock
Maybe it's just a problem with Opera

Nope. Like I said, if I spoof my UA and pretend to be IE, it works fine. It is purely due to the server only allowing access by certain browsers. Consider yourself lucky that Lynx is apparently one of the permitted ones.

[MegaRock]

I don't think Lynx even identifies itself since it pretty much just reads the source file but can't react on it. Gotta admit it's weird that they only block one browser and nothing else. I use IE, Firefox and Lynx and can get in using any of them without issue.

My only other guess is, since the admin login is cookie based maybe its unable to write a cookie compatible with Opera?

[drewbar]

It has nothing to do with "blocking"
IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Lynx and pretty much ever other browser user-agent string begins with "Mozilla/X.X"

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)

Opera does not. SHOUTcast has no way of knowing that Opera is a browser and not a media player.

[blahblahbling]

Originally posted by drewbar
SHOUTcast has no way of knowing that Opera is a browser and not a media player.

Which brings me back to my original points.

1) Browser sniffing is undesirable and problematic.

2) A mozilla user-agent string should not be required to access the server. At the very least, check for an Opera UA as well (but this is far from ideal).

[drewbar]

There has to be a way for the SHOUTcast server to tell a media player from a browser. It sends an audio stream with a media player and a HTML page with a browser with the same address.

The current system works with 99% of the browsers being use out there. I wouldn't expect it to change any time soon.