>> I just now checked the source, and it doesn't accept -O, [...]
> He probably meant "-o" which is on the default command line and which
> forces identd to return "UNKNOWN" or something like that instead of
> "UNIX".

OTHER, it is, and yes, a private email exchange indicates that removing
-o "made it work".

Which means the irc server in question is broken; technically, since
NetBSD isn't UNIX, it mustn't return UNIX or any of the UNIX subtypes,
and there's no OS name registered for UNIX-alikes that aren't real
UNIX, and certainly none for NetBSD itself.  So OTHER is the only
conforming thing to return.  (And that aside, what if the originating
box was some oddball running some OS not registered with the NIC?  What
if local policy was to return UIDs instead of names, to reveal less
potentially-sensitive info, or encrypted tokens, for a stronger version
of the same thing?  Then 1413 is quite clear that OTHER _must_ be
used.)

Rejecting OTHER replies is being stringently fascist to the point of
being only technically non-broken...no question in my mind that the
fault lies with the end that was rejecting a perfectly valid OTHER
reply.

					der Mouse

			    mouse@collatz.mcrcim.mcgill.edu