rexec password requirement

[Murugappan Palaniappan]

Let's assume two machines A and B are both in /etc/hosts.equiv, that is
a user on machine A can do a rsh and exec a program on machine B. However,
performing an rexec of the same program from a C-program requires a password -
the password needs to be in the ~user/.netrc or in the environment variable.
The man pages specify that there should be one entry per machine B - a stringent
requirement.

My questions are:
1) Is there an equivalent command for rexec that would check the hosts.equiv
   file and not require the user's password?
2) If the answer to 1) is no, is there a way for the user to specify only one
   entry in the ~user/.netrc to encompass all machines in the hosts.equiv file?
3) If the answer to 2) is no, what other options do I have?

Note: I cannot do a system("rsh B ...") since this call blocks.

Please e-mail your reply to muru at iris.brown.edu

Thanks.

muru palaniappan