hosts.equiv(5)

💅 hosts.equiv(5) 💅

File Formats Manual energy, but make it a group chat 🫶 — this is the tea on hosts.equiv, and bestie, it's a whole trust-fall situation with your network. Let's get into it ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

hosts.equiv — the list of hosts and users that are granted "trusted" r command access to your system 💖

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so, the file /etc/hosts.equiv is literally the bouncer at the club 🎀 — it allows or denies hosts and users to use the r-commands (like rlogin, rsh, or rcp) without supplying a password. No password. Just vibes. 😭

The file uses the following format:

+|[-]hostname|+@netgroup|-@netgroup
[+|[-]username|+@netgroup|-@netgroup]

So like, let's break it down 👑

The hostname is the name of a host which is logically equivalent to the local host. Users logged into that host are allowed to access like-named user accounts on the local host without supplying a password. The hostname may be (optionally) preceded by a plus (+) sign. If the plus sign is used alone, it allows any host to access your system 😳. You can explicitly deny access to a host by preceding the hostname by a minus (-) sign. Users from that host must always supply additional credentials, including possibly a password. For security reasons you should always use the FQDN of the hostname and not the short hostname 🫶 (fr fr, do it).

The username entry grants a specific user access to all user accounts (except root) without supplying a password. That means the user is NOT restricted to like-named accounts — they're out here living their main character era in everybody's account 💀. The username may be (optionally) preceded by a plus (+) sign. You can also explicitly deny access to a specific user by preceding the username with a minus (-) sign. This says that the user is not trusted no matter what other entries for that host exist. Periodt.

Netgroups can be specified by preceding the netgroup by an @ sign ✨

⚠️ Be extremely careful when using the plus (+) sign, bestie. A simple typographical error could result in a standalone plus sign. A standalone plus sign is a wildcard character that means "any host" 😭😭😭 not the vibe you want.

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📁 FILES 📁

• /etc/hosts.equiv

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📝 NOTES 📝

Some systems will honor the contents of this file only when it has owner root and no write permission for anybody else 👑. Some exceptionally paranoid systems even require that there be no other hard links to the file 🧚

Modern systems use the Pluggable Authentication Modules library (PAM). With PAM a standalone plus sign is considered a wildcard character which means "any host" only when the word promiscuous is added to the auth component line in your PAM file for the particular service (e.g., rlogin).

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

Below are some example /etc/host.equiv or ~/.rhosts files 💖

Allow any user to log in from any host:

+

Allow any user from host with a matching local account to log in:

host

📌 Note: the use of +host is never a valid syntax, including attempting to specify that any user from the host is allowed. Not it. 🙈

Allow any user from host to log in:

host +

📌 Note: this is distinct from the previous example since it does not require a matching local account 👀

Allow user from host to log in as any non-root user:

host user

Allow all users with matching local accounts from host to log in except for baduser:

host -baduser
host

Deny all users from host:

-host

📌 Note: the use of -host -user is never a valid syntax, including attempting to specify that a particular user from the host is not trusted 💀

Allow all users with matching local accounts on all hosts in a netgroup:

+@netgroup

Disallow all users on all hosts in a netgroup:

-@netgroup

Allow all users in a netgroup to log in from host as any non-root user:

host +@netgroup

Allow all users with matching local accounts on all hosts in a netgroup except baduser:

+@netgroup -baduser
+@netgroup

⚠️ Note: the deny statements must always precede the allow statements because the file is processed sequentially until the first matching rule is found. Order matters, bestie, always 🌸

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• rhosts(5)
• rlogind(8)
• rshd(8)

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🥰 stay safe out there and maybe don't leave a stray + lying around 💖✨🎀🦋

signed off with love by Linux man-pages 6.20, dated 2026-02-08 — slay 💅👑