.rhosts

[tech84]

I would think this would be relatively simple, but it's driving me crazy.

Okay, I have two hosts, hosta and hostb. I have two user accounts on each host, in addition to root: user1 & user2. So, in the home directory for user1 on hostb, there is a .rhosts file which is comprised of "hosta" only. Now, the way I thought .rhosts was supposed to work, shouldn't user2 be able to sit at hosta, run rlogin -l user1 hostb , and not be prompted for a password? I get prompted for a password when I try this. Of course, if I have "hosta user2" in .rhosts, then the above command works, and there is no password prompt.

Am I misunderstanding the functionality of the .rhosts file? From what I've read, if a user has a .rhosts file in his home directory with only the name of a remote host, then any user on that remote host can rlogin to this users home directory w/o being prompted for a password.

Please help!

Thanks! Mike

 

[notthehoople]

Nope, don't think you are misunderstanding .rhosts at all but it looks as though it doesn't work as advertised! Try "hosta +" in .rhosts on hostb. This should match any user on hosta and achieve what you want.

 

[tech84]

I did as you suggested, and it worked! I think I have an idea as to what's going on. I realized after I tried your suggestion out that I don't have any patches on my system! I recently set this system up from scratch, and I totally forgot to get the latest updates installed. So this may just be a buggy experience, huh? I'll get those patches installed today.

Thanks for your help! Mike