Configuring an Installation Account

Configuring an Installation Account

During an installation, Inst defaults to using the guest account on the server to accept a connection from the target systems; guest must not be password protected. If the guest account on the server is either unavailable or password protected (to limit access to the target by rsh, for example), you must provide an alternate means for accessing the server. You can allow access to the server in any of these ways:

Remove the password from guest while installations are taking place.
Use an account other than guest on the server (the alternate account must not be password protected) and specify the alternate account when you start Inst (see "Specifying the Source on the Command Line" for details on invoking Inst with the -f flag):
inst -f alternate_user@installation_server:distdir
Use a password-protected account on the server for installations and create an .rhosts file for the installation account. The installation account must have read permissions on the distribution source.
The .rhosts file that you create must contain an entry for each target system that will access the server (see the hosts.equiv(4) reference page for information on .rhosts). For example, assume that the installation account on the server is instuser. The file /usr/people/guest/.rhosts on the installation server contains these lines to permit installations on targets called joesbox and lab1:

joesbox.engr.xxx.com instuser
lab1.engr.xxx.com instuser
Either of the following commands can be used to install software on joesbox or lab1 (see "Step 2: Specifying the Source" and "Specifying the Source on the Command Line" for details on these commands):

Inst> from instuser@installation_server:path
# inst -f instuser@installation_server:path