[KLUG Members] remotely spawning a process without interaction

[Bruce Smith]

> I have a legacy control application that spawns applications on remote
> systems as part of a distributed simulation. It uses rsh to issue ps
> commands to tell if the processes are running and rsh to spawn the
> processes to begin with. to accomplish this each system has the name of
> the control server in its hosts.equiv file so that it doesn't require a
> password.
> 
> Now that I'm upgrading everything from Rh8.x to Suse 9.2 it is more
> secure by default. Is there a way I can still remotely spawn the apps
> and check if they are running without all the computers running rsh
> servers and being open to any command without a password.

You should still be able to run the remote-shell commands (rsh) on SuSE
9.2.  They are probably not installed or enabled by default, and you'll
have to disable the firewall or open port(s) to allow the r-commands.

> I was thinking maybe ssh or something similar. Maybe a list of
> applications that can be started without a password? Or maybe maybe only
> having to login once?

If you applications support it, you can use ssh.  Combine that with
RSA/DSA keys, and you won't need to supply passwords (or run ssh-agent
and only supply the password once after logging in).

 - BS