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From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Should login xterms show /etc/motd?
Message-ID: <40967@think.Think.COM>
Date: 24 Jul 90 04:20:52 GMT
References: <678@venice.SEDD.TRW.COM> <1990Jul20.180959.21846@cs.umn.edu> <5877@crltrx.crl.dec.com>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 22

In article <5877@crltrx.crl.dec.com> jg@crl.dec.com (Jim Gettys) writes:
>xterm has all this junk in it for historical (hysterical) reasons.
>This doesn't mean it is a good idea to add hacks on hacks; therein
>lies long term madness.  xdm did not exist at the time the hacks were
>going into xterm.

XDM is fine for the initial login to a local host.  But it doesn't help in
the case that prompted out question.  One of our users frequently needs to
access a host in Sweden.  He'd like to use "rsh sweden-host xterm -ls
-display his-x-terminal", but this doesn't display the Swedish host's motd.
And "rsh sweden-host xterm -display his-x-terminal -e login $USER" asks him
for a password, which he'd like to bypass (he has hosts.equiv and ~/.rhosts
set up to allow the rsh, so login's password prompt doesn't add any
security).

Someone else mentioned "login -f -p".  Our SunOS 4.0.3 /bin/login appears
to support the "-f" option, but it's undocumented.  What does it do?
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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