remsh setup

[Nick D'Angelo]

Experts,

I am trying to setup remsh on an R class machine so that I can remotely/securely log into it without the password prompt.

For some reason, it continues to ask me for a password when the /etc/hosts.equiv and also a .rhosts file exists in my home directory on the destination machine.

My questions are as follows:

1) what do the permissions need to be on the hosts.equiv and the .rhosts file (or does it not matter)?
2) do I need a fully qualified domain name entered to do this? ie rlogin prdbox.usa.com
3) I must be missing something, but where is that needle in this haystack?

Configuration information as follows:

Destination machine (R machine) includes:

/etc/hosts entry for this box ie

10.20.12.60 prdbox # New R machine
10.20.12.2 oldbox # Current D machine

my .rhosts file on the remote machine

nickd oldbox oldbox.usa.com

I am trying to remsh or rlogin from my oldbox to the prdbox as follows:

rlogin newbox

or

remsh newbox -l root uptime.

Could it be a domain issue as I have two machines in the US domain and my workstation in the Canada domain? (My workstation info I did not provide to keep things simple as possible)

Suggestion?

Thanks,
Nickd

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

Hi Nick,

Immediately, I see that you syntax for .rhosts is backwards; it should be:
newbox nickd
prdbox nickd

I would put the same entries on both boxes in nickd's homedirectory/.rhosts with permissions 600.

If you are using short fully qualified hostnames on one end and unqualified on the other I would make entries in /etc/hosts.equiv and .rhosts for both.

This should get you going, Clay

[Laurent Paumier]

The hosts.equiv or .rhosts syntax should be :

hostname username

So for your configuration to work, you should have "oldbox nickd" in /root/.rhosts (/etc/hosts.equiv isn't used for root).

man rhosts for more information.

[Nick D'Angelo]

Doh,

I think this is obviously a case of not being able to see the tree for the forest.

It worked like a charm.

Thanks,

Nickd

[Jack Werner]

I see you got the help you needed. I use the following in my home .rhosts for each node on which I have an account:
+ myloginname

You also have to make sure your password is synch'd accross any nodes you want to r(cmd) between. A quick test I like is "remsh remotenode date" , to see if r(cmds) are working.

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

http://www.securityportal.com/cover/coverstory20000814.html