.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 usernameThis 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.