gr_osview on a remote host

[Rod Paul]

In article <28921 at sgi.SGI.COM> jmb at patton.SGI.COM (Jim Barton) writes:
>In article <7133 at phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, ijlustig at phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Irvin Lustig) writes:
>> We are trying to use the -N option of gr_osview and get the message
>> "Password incorrect."
>> "Unable to invoke remote demon"

>Due to a bug in the current gr_osview, going to any 'user' which has a
>password in the password file will fail.  Unfortunately, this causes a
>security breach which may not be acceptable in some installations.  I
>haven't been able to devise a workaround.
>
>This bug will be fixed in the next release of IRIX, the 3.2 release due
>mid-year.
>
>PS.   This bug is totally my own fault, so flame me, but it's not really
>      necessary to trash SGI for not fixing bugs.  Even the best of us
>      can't do everything perfect.
>

Jim, I suggest not trashing yourself on this one... I logged a call a couple
of weeks ago to SGI (I assume the mid is still open), your program isn't
the only one with this problem. Anyway I explained to the support guy,
that not only is "gr_osview" unable to execute a remote daemon, but neither
can "bru" if the password field is locked ("bru" also defaults to "guest").

Being the nosey parker that I am I ran "strings" (piped through my favourite,
"less") on both "gr_osview" and "bru", both made some call to a bsd routine 
I don't recall the exact name right now, but I beleive it was "ruserpass.c"
which makes reference to a ".netrc" file (I assume to be similar to ".rhosts").

Unfortunatly the support guy I talked to hadn't ever heard of a ".netrc" 
file either. If it's format can be found (I assume "ruserpass" looks for it),
problem may be solved? 

I know life ain't that easy and if you wrote "bru" too I know that won't 
be the answer...

Cheers,

Rod.
-- 
Rodian Paul
Big Electric Cat Public UNIX
..!cmcl2!dasys1!rpaul