Would anyone tell me the difference?

[papatot]

/etc/hosts.equiv & .rhosts

[Tom Geudens · Accepted solution]

Hi,
This may be too simple an explanation, but I thought the difference was that the first one is systemwide, the second one is userspecific (and resides in a user's homedirectory).

Regards,
Tom

[Pete Randall]

My understanding is that /etc/hosts.equiv is the global equivalent of .rhosts. In other words, if you have hosts.equiv, it's like having a .rhosts in every home directory, i.e. everybody can do it.

I think!

Pete

[Peter Kloetgen]

Hi Papatot,

the explanation of Tom and Pete are correct.

Allways stay on the bright side of life!

Peter

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

And IIRC, /etc/hosts.equiv is allowed to be publicly readable, where ~/.rhosts should be 0400 mode

[Bill Hassell]

And as a reminder: /etc/hosts.equiv can be a severe security risk by allowing logins without authentication (ie, no password needed). The worst security risk is just a single + in the hosts.equiv file. (every machine and every user is allowed in without a password)

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

.rhosts is user specific

where as /etc/hosts.equiv is OS specific and has to be put very carefully .


Manoj Srivastava

[Darrell Allen]

A major difference is that hosts.equiv is ignored for superusers. See the man page for rhosts.

Darrell