All the r-tools are based on the concept of trusted hosts and users, i.e. on one host, you say which user(s) from what host(s) you allow to access a specific account. There are two places where this information is kept:
cp /dev/null /etc/hosts.equiv) as this
file is mostly a big security hole.
rsh).
If you're really upset about your system's security, keep your
users from having such files.
Both files contain pairs of host-user-combinations, where host is the host that users are allowed to log in from, and user tells which user is actually allowed to log in from that host (to that specific account, in the case of `~/.rhosts'.
Example! I've got an account "c9020" on
RRZSG1.RZ.UNI-REGENSBURG.DE. When I want to login into hubert's
account on DUSK without giving a password, I've got to put the
following into hubert's `~/.rhosts':
rrzsg1.rz.uni-regensburg.de c9020
If you've trouble what to take as hostname (i.e., with or without
domain, or even IP-number), login (probably with giving a
password), then start who. This will tell you the hostname
you've to put into your `~/.rhosts':
dusk% who hubert ttyp0 Mar 21 13:59 (rrzsg1.rz.uni-reg)
This shows that I have to use rrzsg1.rz.uni-regensburg.de as hostname (don't mind if the hostname's truncated, if it contains a single dot, use the FQDN).