remsh problem

[Bill Hassell]

And to amplify the solution a bit: remsh is a good metric for bad DNS configurations. Since remsh is bypassing the usual interactive login authentication, it resorts to the only security available: DNS reverse lookup. Unfortunately, DNS is often assigned to the PC admins who think in terms of domains and WINS. Reverse IP lookup may be missing as well as MX (mail delivery).

Now if you don't use DNS (no /etc/resolv.conf file) then /etc/hosts will govern what remsh will see. The two commands to check name resolution are nslookup and nsquery:

nslookup abc
nslookup 12.34.56.78
nsquery hosts abc

[Dennis Handly]

I've had cases where rlogin didn't work so I had to use the IP address in my .rhosts file until the sysadmin could figure out why DNS or NIS wasn't working.