This has puzzling me for a while. I hope someone can help me understand this:
Once we log in to one of our unix servers, we can log in to other unix servers by just typing the host name. Without providing a password.
I have always curious how they were set up this way and found out that admin made a sybolic link(I think this is how they made it):

ln -s /usr/bin/rsh /usr/bin/hostname1

My question is why can people just type hostname1 and get to login to other host server?

What's going on?

From the "rsh" manual page
Cheers
ZB

I have three linux servers all set up the same way( I think) but one of the servers can't use hostname as rsh sybolic link.
I `ln -s /usr/bin/rsh /usr/bin/hostname1` on this hostname1 server.
But when I typied hostname1 from hostname2, I got this:
....
Connection refused
...

But I can do this from hostname2 with no problem: `rsh hostname1 ls`
It will give me the list of that directory.


I can do it from hostname1 to hostname2--one way.

Why?

On hostname1 check the .rhosts file in the home directory of the user you are running 'hostname1' as from hostname2.

They are all set up the same way in .rhosts file:
hostname1 username1
hostaname2 username2


Basically I can't run rlogin on one of the linux to the other machine.
Is there anything I should look related to rlogin?