[Followup set to COLN]

In comp.os.linux.networking Rene Girard <aa@bb.yy> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> If I have posted this message on the wrong newsgroup, please let me know
> which one
> I should use.
>
> I need to have "rshd" (Remore Shell Daemon) running in order to be able to
> use
> MPICH (Message Passing Interface) for parallel computing. I checked the file
> "/etc/inetd.conf" and the lines for the BSD protocols are there i.e.
>
> shell stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/sbin/in.rshd
> login stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/sbin/in.rlogind
>
> and I also checked to make that the rsh (Remote Shell) software was
> installed.

Did you HUP inetd? (killall -HUP inetd). After you do that, you can
verify that something is listening on that port with the command
"netstat -at", and looking for a LISTENING entry for the ports shell and
login respectively.

Do you have anything in /etc/hosts.deny and /etc/hosts.allow? You can
use the tcpdchk program to verify that its a given IP can access a given
service. The service name you need to use in hosts.{allow,deny} will be
"in.rshd", or possibly "shell".

You also need appropriate entries in /etc/hosts.equiv for rsh to let
people in. Here is an example of what you need

csatm4.localeth cameron
csatm4atm.localatm cameron
csatm5.localeth cameron
csatm5atm.localatm cameron
csatm6.localeth cameron
csatm6atm.localatm cameron
csatm7.localeth cameron
csatm7atm.localatm cameron
csatm8.localeth cameron
csatm8atm.localatm cameron
localhost cameron
-

You'll need to repeat all the lines above (excppt "-") for every user.
Or at least, this is what I had to do when I was doing that sort of
thing. I'd much rather drop rsh completely though and use SSH instead
(and under Debian Woody at least, if the rsh package isn't installed,
rsh is set up to be ssh)

> I admit that the above shows my lack of knowledge and understanding of
> the role of "rshd" and any help in becoming more knowledgeable about
> this would be much appreciated.

RSH is dangerous and should *ONLY* *EVER* be used in tightly controlled
situations, and *NEVER* accessable via untrusted networks. Consider the
use of the Berkeley R-commands to be highly deprecated.

> Additional information:
>
> OS: Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4
> (Yes, it is old but besides the "rshd" problem, it does the job )

Extremely old, that was the very first distribution I used when I was
learning Linux all those many years ago, so its over ummm, 6? years old
by now. I hope for your sake, its not (at least directly) accessable via
the internet.

--
Cameron Kerr
cameron.kerr@paradise.net.nz : http://nzgeeks.org/cameron/
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