macOS

Uses the same SSH mechanism, credentials, and host key verification as the SSH-based OS identification family, but runs sw_vers — the standard, documented way to read a Mac’s OS identity — rather than reading a file.

targets:
  - id: mac-host
    product: macos
    address: host.example.com
    credentials: linux-host-ssh

Why sw_vers, not uname -a

Darwin’s uname -a reports the machine’s own hostname as part of its output — nothing this probe has a reason to see or store. sw_vers’s three-line ProductName/ProductVersion/BuildVersion output carries none of that. Verified live against a real Mac (macOS 15.4, BuildVersion 24E248, over SSH) — Apple’s EULA restricts macOS virtualization to genuine Apple hardware, so this was the one product in the whole SSH family that needed a real physical Mac rather than a container or a downloadable VM image.

Only ProductName: macOS (10.12 Sierra onward) is recognized — older releases reported "Mac OS X" instead, a shape never confirmed live against a real system, so it’s treated as unsupported rather than guessed at.

Recorded fields

• version — from ProductVersion
• extra.buildVersion — from BuildVersion, when present
• extra.hostKeyVerified

Lifecycle resolver

endoflife:macos.