Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-sdd!apollo!pato
From: pato@apollo.HP.COM (Joe Pato)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: rlogin & rsh
Message-ID: <46436727.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Date: 16 Oct 89 15:14:00 GMT
References: <8910140409.AA22141@umix.cc.umich.edu>
Sender: root@apollo.HP.COM
Reply-To: pato@apollo.HP.COM (Joe Pato)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Apollo Division - Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 59

In article <8910140409.AA22141@umix.cc.umich.edu> YEOAK@NUSDISCS.BITNET writes:
>Re: rlogin & rsh
>
>I've posted this before and managed to solve part of
>the problem, ie rsh. The problem was that rsh didn't work
>from DSP90 (running SR10.1 with SYSTYPE=bsd4.3) to HP9000
>and SUN. The way I solved is to add in group name in the
>respective .rhosts files of the destination nodes. Eg. in ~yeoak/.rhost
>of the HP9000 or SUN node where I want to rsh from DSP90:
>
>    dsp90 yeoak.compsc
>
>         where dsp90 is the hostname
>               yeoak is the username
>               compsc is the groupname
>    note: yeoak.compsc.none is defined in node dsp90's SR10.1 registry
>          but yeoak.staff is defined in hp9000 /etc/passwd & /etc/group
>
>So when I did (from DSP90):            rsh HP9000 -l yeoak "ls"
>and I got the result. But if I did:    rsh HP9000 "ls"
>and still... "login incorrect" is returned.
>
>Anybody has any idea why it is do? Is this documented? Is this a "legitimate"
>solution?
>
>--AnnKian Yeo
>  Email:  YEOAK%NUSDISCS.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
>  Department of Information Systems and Computer Science (DISCS)
>  National University of Singapore (NUS)

The problem you have encountered is that the passwd files on the HP and on the
apollo (the registry on Domain/OS) are not in synch.  Rlogin and Rsh rely on
account names being the same on the two machines - if they are different you
must use "rsh <machine> -l <user>" and make the appropriate annotation in the
.rhost file.

The problem is further complicated in that account names in Domain/OS are
not necessarily a simple username.  Account names are of the form
Person.Group.Org.   The registry allows an administrator to choose an
abbreviation for an account name - i.e., the administrator can choose to allow
people to login with just a person name.  e.g., The account "bob.staff.none"
can be abbreviated to "bob" if the abbreviation for the account is <person>.

If everyone has a primary login account (an account that is abbreviated to
<person>) then UNIX tools (e.g., getpwuid(getuid())) will extract a simple name
from the registry database and work as expected.  If not, then you have to
make sure that the foreign machine's /etc/passwd file has the appropriate
person.group or person.group.org entries.  (In your case, the HP passwd file
and the apollo registry were not in synch)

These problems go away if you run Apollo's portable Passwd Etc product on the
foreign machines.  Using Passwd Etc, all machines have direct access to the
shared registry database - and this way the accounts database (passwd files)
cannot get out of synch.  Currently Passwd Etc is available for SunOS >3.4 and
Vax Ultrix 2.2.  An HP/UX version of the product is not yet available.

 Joe Pato
 Apollo Computer            A Subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard
 NSFNET: pato@apollo.com    UUCP: ...{attunix,uw-beaver,brunix}!apollo!pato