🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> "Brett" == Brett Taylor <brett.taylor@capgemini.co.uk> wrote:

Brett> I have a closed network and wish to allow the root user access
Brett> to all boxes.  I know that this is not usually advisable but I
Brett> am the only administrator and the network is not of critical
Brett> importance so security is not a major issue.  In trying to set
Brett> up 'trust' between the machines I have created a .rhosts file
Brett> in all of the root home directories.  This file contains all of
Brett> the hostnames on my network - why can I not, therefore, access
Brett> all of the machines??  

Could be a variety of reasons.  I'd check that the forward and reverse
lookups of the connecting machine match on the machine it won't let
you onto (look at /etc/nsswitch.conf to see whether this comes from
/etc/hosts or via DNS).

The other thing to check is /etc/pam.conf (or /etc/pam.d/rlogin or
whatever) for pam_securetty.so and remove that line for the r*
commands you want to use; if you don't use pam then you should check
rlogind is invoked with `-h' in /etc/inetd.conf.  Also check the
permissions of .rhosts aren't too lax; that can also cause problems in
some cases.  Does rlogind not log why it's refusing the initial
connection?  You might need to start logging *.debug somewhere to be
sure of seeing any rejection messages.

Brett> It is very bizarre, in that it will allow me to connect to some
Brett> machines seamlessly whilst still requests a password for
Brett> others.  Any ideas??

You probably need to narrow it down a bit more (for instance is it
always pairs of hosts that don't behave, or is it one host logging
into everywhere, or anything logging into a certain host).  

If it lets you login as root after prompting for a passwd my random
guess would be your forward and reverse DNS lookups don't match for
certain hosts, otherwise you probably need to look at fixing the pam
stuff.

Stefan