Installing and Administering Internet Services

Chapter 2 55

Installing and Conﬁguring Internet Services

Conﬁguring Files to Bypass Security

The following ﬁles may be used to allow users access to your host without

supplying a password:

• /etc/hosts.equiv, a ﬁle owned by user root. This ﬁle allows

certain users to connect to your host with rcp, remsh, or rlogin

without supplying a password.

• $HOME/.rhosts, a ﬁle that may be created by any user in his or her

home directory. This ﬁle allows certain users to connect to your host

with rcp, remsh, or rlogin without supplying a password.

• $HOME/.netrc, a ﬁle that may be created by any user in his or her

home directory. This ﬁle allows certain users to connect to your host

with ftp or rexec without supplying a password.

CAUTION These ﬁles create a signiﬁcant security risk.

The remshd and rlogind servers can be conﬁgured to ignore

$HOME/.rhosts ﬁles. See “To Disable Use of $HOME/.rhosts” on page

57.

To Conﬁgure the /etc/hosts.equiv File

Each line in the /etc/hosts.equiv ﬁle has the following form:

hostname [username]

You can use either a text editor or SAM to conﬁgure the

/etc/hosts.equiv ﬁle. To run SAM, type sam at the HP-UX prompt.

SAM has an extensive online help facility.

If a user is logged into a host listed in your /etc/hosts.equiv ﬁle, and

the user’s login name is listed in your passwd database, the user may

connect to your host with rcp, remsh, or rlogin, and the user will not

be prompted for a password.

If a username is included in /etc/hosts.equiv, only the speciﬁed user

on the associated host may connect to your host without supplying a

password. However, the speciﬁed user may log in as any user on your

system (except root) without supplying a password.