UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I have encountered a problem when I try to issue a remsh command to a remote system (Solaris).

I have created the .rhost file in the home directory on the remote system and added the hostname and user.

"cat .rhosts
192.168.133.26 root"

But when I issue the command from the local system (HP-UX) I recieve the following error.

"remsh 192.168.133.185 ls -l root
permission denied"

Someone who can help me out here? Do I need to restart any service to make work?

Thanks,

/Andreas

What command did you type to get such message?
What are .rhosts permissions?

.rhosts should contain the exact server name not an IP address or an alias.

The local system.
[root@schassen]> remsh 192.168.133.185 ls -l root
permission denied
[root@schassen]>

On the remote system.
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 21 Mar 26 15:33 .rhosts

root@hera> cat .rhosts
192.168.133.26 root
root@hera>

As already mentionned, in .rhosts you should have the hostname, I usually for security reason set the files perms to -rw------ (some OS will not let you use if r for all)
And you should have the host in /etc/inet/hosts with:
<IP> <name> <fully qualifyed name>

You should also start by testing just remsh <hostname> to see if it asks you a passwd or not...

Stage 1: Basic check.
First check that you have a normal localhost entry in your hosts file similar to this.
127.0.0.1 localhost loopback
Try remsh to localhost - you should get prompted for a password.
remsh localhost
Add localhost to root's .rhosts file.
localhost root
Try remsh to localhost - you should not get prompted for a password.
remsh localhost
Now REMOVE the localhost entry from .rhosts - it's a security hole.

Stage 2: First get remsh working within each computer such that you can remsh to yourself. This involves putting your local machine's host name in the local machine's .rhosts file and ensuring that the name agrees with the host's name in the local hosts file.

Stage 3: Assuming that both computers agree on the name for each other (nslookup computername) then transcribe the .rhosts entry to the opposing machine.

As previously advised the permissions on a .rhosts file are critical and the file will be ignored if they are wrong.