SFINX documents - the .rhosts file

The .rhosts file resides in the user's home directory. This file is consulted by programs such as rlogin, rsh (see also Rlogin) and rcp to grant access to the user from certain trusted machines, without password authentication.

Usually, the file contains only one line:

+@sterrewacht username
This grants access to the user from all machines of the Sterrewacht. It is quite safe to allow this, and it makes life a lot easier. Be careful, however, in adding more lines. Granting access to your own account at another institute may come in handy sometimes, but it also means that if the remote system is penetrated by a hacker, our system may get compromised too. Granting full access to your account to a collaborator or student is also not a very good idea; if you need to share files with your collaborators, you can do so by setting the right file permissions.


David.Jansen@strw.leidenuniv.nl
Last modified: Thu Nov 9 13:00:49 MET 1995