Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!ho95e!wcs
From: wcs@ho95e.ATT.COM (Bill.Stewart)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: rsh equivalent
Message-ID: <2028@ho95e.ATT.COM>
Date: 3 Mar 88 03:53:11 GMT
References: <23511@hi.unm.edu>
Reply-To: wcs@ho95e.UUCP (46323-Bill.Stewart,2G218,x0705,)
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs 46133, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 23

In article <23511@hi.unm.edu> cyrus@hi.unm.edu (Tait Cyrus) writes:
:The reason I am interested in something other than rsh is because
:here at UNM we are strongly considering disallowing the r* programs
:(rsh/rcp/rlogin) because they do NOT conform to the RFC's
:[(machine name case independent).]
:as well as being BIG security problems (.rhosts).

My big gripe with the r* programs is that they lose UNIX semantics.
For instance, rsh doesn't return the condition code from the remote process -
	rsh foovax false
returns true if the connection succeeded.  Less important but harder to fix,
rsh is non-interactive; I've gotten real used to Datakit's remote execution
capabilities ("dk other3b /bin/ksh").  It would also be nice to have a
convenient rcp-variant that didn't update modification times.

I'm less bothered by machine-name-case dependence - r* are specifically
UNIX utilities, and case dependence is appropriate.  (By contrast, HP's
NS-9000, NS-VAX, NS-etc. utilities are supposed to be transparent between
systems; it took us several days of cable-testing to find that the 350
didn't accept it's name in uppercase, as generated on a VMS microvax.)
-- 
#				Thanks;
# Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G218, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs