Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!OKEEFFE.BERKELEY.EDU!karels
From: karels@OKEEFFE.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike Karels)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: rsh equivalent
Message-ID: <8803030604.AA23480@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 3 Mar 88 06:04:07 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 34


> I am looking for PD version of code that accomplishes the same thing
> as rsh but conforms to the RFC's (machine name case independent).
> We have users who like to pipe BIG jobs from one machine to another
> machine via rsh's.  

Conforms to *what* RFCs?  In particular, machine name case independence
isn't the subject of any RFC, and has no bearing on remote login or
execution facility protocols or specification.  It's a user-interface
issue.  Incidentally, when using the nameserver for hostname lookup,
this interface *is* case insensitive.  You seemed to have picked upon
the most trivial of criteria for judging such protocols and implementations.

(None of the above should be construed as defense of the rlogin and rsh
facilities.  The main reason that I haven't made any attempt to document
these "protocols" publically is that it might help to keep them from
proliferating.  I've been lobbying a few people to try putting a few options
into telnet that would give it every capability of rlogin and many more,
so that we could toss rlogin out.  The current wish-list is negotiation
of local or remote flow control, automatic user-name propagation and login,
and maybe even exporting the Unix environment, which rlogin doesn't do either.
Sun's "on" program does this, but I haven't looked at it much.  Automatic
switching between character and line mode with local echoing may be a win,
and can already be done by our current telnet clients.)

> 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 as well
> as being BIG security problems (.rhosts).

The .rhosts file isn't the problem; you're picking on the wrong things.
However, see the reply about Kerberos.

		Mike