Using HP-UX Internet Services (February 2007)

remote host and must be allowed remote command execution. (The working directory
on the remote host is the user’s home directory.) You can also specify a user name on
a remote host for rdist that has the appropriate permissions for accessing files on the
remote host. For more information, see “Creating the distfile” (page 26).
rdist on the master host reads commands from distfile, an ASCII file that specifies
the files or directories to be copied, the remote hosts to be updated, and the operations
to be performed for the update. You can specify the distfile when invoking rdist
on the master host using the -f command-line option. Otherwise, rdist searches in
the current working directory for the file named Distfile to use as the input file.
Setting Up remsh
rdist uses remsh as the mechanism for distributing files over the network. In order
to use rdist, you must set up remsh on all the remote hosts. To set up remsh, perform
the following steps on each of the remote hosts:
1. Create an entry for the master host in the $HOME/.rhosts file of the user who
runs rdist.
For example, if rdist is run by the root user, create an entry for the master host
in the root’s .rhosts file (/.rhosts) on each remote hosts.
NOTE: On each remote host, ensure that the following entry is uncommented
in the /etc/inetd.conf file (that is, ensure that this entry is not preceded by
#).
shell stream tcp nowait root /usr/lbin/remshd remshd
2. Issue the following command to force inetd to reread its configuration file:
/usr/sbin/inetd -c
Authentication for remsh and rexec Services
Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) for authentication is supported on HP-UX.
PAM support enables users who are not listed in the /etc/passwd file to use the
rexec and remsh services. It also enables you to use authentication methods other
than the standard UNIX® authentication mechanisms such as distributed Computing
Environment (DCE) integrated login and Kerberos.
The rexecd and remshd services use the authentication mechanism specified in the
OTHER directive of the /etc/pam.conf file. To use other authentication methods,
you must edit the /etc/pam.conf file.
24 Distributing Files Using rdist