Jeff Terrell
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Computer Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

jsterrel AT cs.unc.edu
(919) 962-1791 (office)

rsh hangs

Setup

I was on a FreeBSD 2.2.8 machine, foxy, attempting to rsh to a FreeBSD 5.1 machine, chewie.

Symptoms

When trying to connect to chewie as any user, rsh hangs for about 60 seconds, then fails.

Background

inetd, if enabled, launches server processes to handle incoming connections. inetd is governed by the /etc/inetd.conf configuration file. The rc scripts contained in /etc/rc.d/ are used to start and stop processes such as inetd, as controlled by /etc/rc.conf. The inetd_enable variable should be set to "YES" in /etc/rc.conf to enable inetd.

Resolution

The line inetd_enable="YES" was added to /etc/rc.conf. The command /etc/rc.d/inetd start was issued.