Configuring AIX to use the rcp command

[Jeff Daigle]

Thanks for the responses. Patrick, I tried pinging both ways- they both fail (100% packet loss). I will look into the networking. I guess I misunderstood. I thought if they can ftp each other, then they must be networked correctly? Apparently, there is more to it (Forgive me, I'm still building experience). Thanks for all the help. Jeff

[harry d brown jr]

Jeff,

At a minimum, find out what kind of "name-resolution" for server names you are using. You can just add server1 to server2's /etc/hosts, and server2 to server1's /etc/hosts file. Then try your ping - unless of course your networking engineers have turned off icmp. Instead of bashing your head against the wall, ask your network engineers what protocols they have blocked and/or opened between the two servers!

live free or die
harry

[Patrick Wallek]

Good point Harry! I hadn't thought about that.

Are these machines on the same subnet? It shouldn't matter, but if there is a router involved then Harry has a very valid point.

Make sure that the remote services ports are allowed. These should 512, 513, 514 and 515 (both TCP and UDP) I think. At least on HP-UX, don't know about AIX for sure.

You might also check and make sure that these services are enabled in the AIX equivalent of /etc/inetd.conf and /etc/services. If they aren't enabled, they won't work.

You are correct in that if FTP works then the rest of your networking should work. Can you telnet between the servers? What about remsh or rsh?

[W Sanders]

The "connection timed out" points toward a firewall issue, assuming the IP address is getting resolved somehow (it still may not be, although if you can ftp but not nslookup you may be resolving the host through NIS or host file. etc).

If rcp were not actually enabled on the other machine (say in inetd.conf) you would see a "connection refused" instead of a timeout as your TCP "three way handshake" succeeded but the machine refused the rcp connection.

The timeout means your handshake itself is not succeeding die to routing, name service, a firewll, or some other problem.

[Jeff Daigle]

Thank you all for the help. Each of these servers has its own router. I learned that each of these two routers needs to have an entry in the ACL (access control list) Table in order to permit the other server to contact it. This is being done, which will basically open up the port that rcp uses.
Thanks for all the help.
Jeff

[melvyn burnard]

You might also consider asking this question in an IBM AIX forum in future, and not an HP-UX forum. This may speed up the problem resolution