remote logins not showing up in 'w' command

Larry West west at sdcsla.UUCP
Fri Jun 21 14:03:24 AEST 1985


In article <205 at ubvax.UUCP> paul at ubvax.UUCP (Paul Fries) writes:
>Although I am not a rlogin user (we at Ungermann-Bass Inc. generally
>use our own networking that supports full connectivity between terminals
>and our hosts, so our terminals aren't connected to the hosts directly...
>we can simply call the host we want from our terminals.) I have gotten
>the impression that rlogin is handled through the uucp login.  Thus,
>your "rlogin"s would appear to be "uucp" logins that are running "uuxqt".
>
>I think this is supported by the fact that "rlogin" doesn't require a
>password.  If "login" was being used, you would see the user in a "w",
>but you would have to give a password.

Nope.   Rlogin on Berkeley Unix has no relation to "uucp".   It is
implemented using sockets (InterProcess Communication).

Further, "rlogin" does require a password, with two exceptions:

	A) If both machines [the one you are currently on and the
	   one to which you would like to go] are in each other's
	   "/etc/hosts.equiv" -- a list of hosts on which accounts
	   with the same name (number?) are to be considered equal.
	   E.g., "ronald at clown" and "ronald at bozo" are given free
	   access to each other if "clown" and "bozo" are in each
	   other's "hosts.equiv" file.   This is generally useful
	   when an organization has several machines, e.g., on
	   an Ethernet, and people move around from machine to
	   machine.
	
	B) If you have an account named "ronald at whitevax" and
	   another named "constanin at kremvax", it doesn't matter
	   what's in "/etc/hosts.equiv", since the names are
	   different.   So each account (which wants to allow
	   rlogin from the other) can have a file named "~/.rhosts",
	   which is a listing of
			hostname username
	   pairs (one per line).   So "ronald at whitevax" would
	   add this line:
			kremvax constanin
	   to his ".rhosts" file.   (This file must not be a symbolic
	   link, for security reasons, by the way.   And it generally
	   should be readable only by the owner.)

The above applies to "rsh" (remote shell) as well.

Sorry to go on at such length, but I hate to see such misinformation
spread.

The original question has been adequately answered already.
-- 

Larry West			Institute for Cognitive Science
(USA+619-)452-6220		UC San Diego (mailcode C-015) [x6220]
ARPA: <west at nprdc.ARPA>		La Jolla, CA  92093  U.S.A.
UUCP: {ucbvax,sdcrdcf,decvax,ihnp4}!sdcsvax!sdcsla!west OR ulysses!sdcsla!west



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