You can also use ssh to configure password-less login to a remote computer.
It is just (on computer a):
$ ssh-keygen # use an empty password! $ scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub computer_b:.ssh/authorized_keys That's it.
Now you can do a
$ ssh computer_b without having to enter a password.
You can optionally configure things like:
- host alias for computer_b, e.g. to be able to enter
ssh alias - set public-key authentication as default for that host/alias
- allow only public-key authentication (for the sshd on computer_b)
Unless you can't use ssh, it seems to be much more convenient to setup than rlogin.
Plus, ssh protects you against main-in-the-middle attacks and eavesdropping.
Troubleshooting
Make sure that the ~/.ssh has the right permissions (on both systems) - i.e. is only accessible by your user - otherwise ssh ignores it. That means only rwx------ for the directory and rw------- for the files. Use ls -l and ls -ld to verify this.
Make sure that the remote ~/.ssh/authorized_keys contains the correct public key. Verify via:
$ ssh computer_b cat '~/.ssh/authorized_keys' # remote $ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub # local If the setup does not work like this, perhaps you have to explicitly configure the client side, i.e. adding something like this to .ssh/config:
Host computer_b Hostname some_hostname User juser PreferredAuthentications publickey # makes testing easier IdentitiesOnly yes IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub For diagnosing issues it is also useful to add -v to ssh call, e.g.:
$ ssh -v computer_b