🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2400066@kailand> pwolfe@kailand.KAI.COM writes:
>The format for .netrc is:
>	hostname username password
>
>The .netrc file is used by telnet and ftp (and apparently, rexec), to allow
>frequent users of other machines to avoid having to type logins and passwords
>everytime they login.  [...] I suspect that there is no manpage for ".netrc"
>because Sequent would prefer that customers reduce their risks by not
>knowing about it.

Perhaps some of the confusion has been caused by the re-use of the .netrc
file...once upon a time, when Berknet was the network that BSD sites
used (eg. "netcp" et.al.) the .netrc file held some configuration info
for Berknet commands.  (I believe that there was also a way to put an
encrypted version of your password into your environment, in order to
avoid having to type it frequently and/or storing it in plaintext somewhere.)

Well, Berknet is long dead, and the .netrc file is now used by ftp & Co.
Here's an example from mine:

machine a.cs.uiuc.edu login anonymous password rich

This allows me to use anonymous FTP to a site at Illinois without
being prompted for the username or password; since anonymous FTP
accepts any password, this isn't much of a security hole.  Of course,
were this an entry for a "real" account, including the password in
plaintext would be a Bad Thing.
-- 
Rich Kulawiec