rhosts (5)

Leading comments

Copyright (c) 1995 Peter Tobias <tobias@et-inf.fho-emden.de>
This file may be distributed under the GNU General Public License.

(The comments found at the beginning of the groff file "man5/rhosts.5".)

NAME

$HOME/.rhosts - grants or denies password-free r-command access to a specific user account

DESCRIPTION

The .rhosts file allows or denies a user who has an account on the local host to use the r-commands (e.g. rlogin, rsh or rcp) without supplying a password.

The file uses the following format:

hostname [username]

Such an entry grants password-free r-command access for the user with the login name username from the remote host hostname. If no user name is specified, the user must have the same login name on the remote host and the local host. For security reasons you should always use the FQDN of the hostname and not the short hostname.

Netgroups can be specified by preceeding the netgroup by an @ sign.

The .rhosts file must be owned by the user or root, and writable only by the owner.

FILES

$HOME/.rhosts

SEE ALSO

hosts.equiv(5), rshd(8), rlogind(8)