rc and rsh

rc and rsh

[rsalz]

I don't think I understand the problems people are having with rsh and rc.
Does this function do the 'right thing' ?
fn rsh host1 host2... { flag= host=$0 {
    ~ $1 -n && { shift ; flag=-n }
    ~ $0 rsh && { host=$1 ; shift }
    eval 'rsh $flag $host rc -lc ''' ^ $* ^ ''''
} }

Re: rc and rsh

[Scott Schwartz]

| I don't think I understand the problems people are having with rsh and rc.
| Does this function do the 'right thing' ?
| fn rsh host1 host2... { flag= host=$0 {
|     ~ $1 -n && { shift ; flag=-n }
|     ~ $0 rsh && { host=$1 ; shift }
|     eval 'rsh $flag $host rc -lc ''' ^ $* ^ ''''
| } }

One (general) problem is that rsh leaves open file descriptors hanging
around in its child processes.  The solution I posted takes care to
close them so that if you ask for 'xterm&' the rshd exits cleanly.

Re: rc and rsh

[rsalz]

Yeah, fixing the quotes is an exercise for the reader ...

>But then, what happens when you use this?
>
>	; rsh wherever do something
>	rc not found
It seemed to me most of the problems were getting rc to read .rcrc
or some other init file at the right time, so this case isn't interesting.
	/r$

Re: rc and rsh

[Donn Cave]

| I don't think I understand the problems people are having with rsh and rc.
| Does this function do the 'right thing' ?
| fn rsh host1 host2... { flag= host=$0 {
|     ~ $1 -n && { shift ; flag=-n }
|     ~ $0 rsh && { host=$1 ; shift }
|     eval 'rsh $flag $host rc -lc ''' ^ $* ^ ''''
| } }

Well, I can't resist pointing out that there are some implementation
details involving quotes.  That's supposed to be one of the reasons
we like rc, right?  Easy, straightforward quoting!  Someone who knows
the language better than I maybe can straighten this one out so that
it doesn't require the user to quote the remote command (I think this
is just a matter of discarding the "^"s), and so that the eventual
rc -lc actually does get a quoted string.

But then, what happens when you use this?

	; rsh wherever do something
	rc not found
	; /usr/ucb/rsh wherever whatis path
	path=('' /usr/ucb /bin /usr/bin)
	; rlogin wherever
	welcome to wherever
	; whatis rc
	/usr/local/bin/rc

Not that there aren't ways to work around the problem.  Some of them
made it onto this list recently, and the most workable of them involved
invoking rc differently from /etc/passwd - either as "-rc", or a script
that invokes "rc -l".

	Donn Cave, University Computing Services, University of Washington
	donn@cac.washington.edu