Problems with rexecd under Ultrix 4.0

[Tom Pitman]

I am having a bit of a problem with the rexec daemon under Ultrix 4.0
on both a Vax 8650 and a DECstation 5000/200.

I am running MacX on my Mac IIcx.  To initiate connections to other systems
MacX uses the rexec protocol.  This works fine on most of our systems here
on campus, ranging from Vaxen running VMS to IBM RTs running AIX to
Suns running SunOS.  But for some inexplicable it will not work under
Ultrix.

We have determined that rexec seems to work if the user on the Ultrix
machine is either root or a member of group 0 (system group).
In the syslog file a message like the following is logged when a
mere mortal attempts to rexec to one of the ultrix boxes:

Dec  7 17:23:59 localhost: 11141 rexecd: setgid: Not owner

To verify that MacX was not the root of the problem, I wrote a small
program using the rexec subroutine - with the same results.

Has anyone else run across this problem, or better yet does anyone have
a solution?

Thanks in advance for any assistance you may be able to offer.

-- 
Tom Pitman                    - Tom.Pitman at UC.Edu
Associate Systems Engineer    - tpitman at ucbeh.BITNET
University of Cincinnati      - tpitman at ucbeh.san.uc.edu
Academic Computing Services   - tpitman at ucunix.san.uc.edu