I've just spent some time trying to work out why I couldn't rsh to our F740 from some newly installed machines even though I had added them to /etc/hosts.equiv.
It turns out, apparently, that the option telnet.hosts list gets into the act:
if the rsh'ing host isn't in the telnet.hosts list, then it gets a prompt rejection, and nothing is logged in /etc/messages;
if it gets past that, then /etc/hosts.equiv is checked for host and (possibly implied) userid, and if *this* check fails then a "[rshd_0]: Permission denied to rsh request from ... at ..." is logged to /etc/messages.
This is with 5.3.5. Has it always been like this? I could have sworn not, but the two lists have been in step here for a long time, so I could be wrong.
There's nothing in the hosts.equiv(5), rshd(8), or options(1) man pages to suggest that telnet.hosts affects anything except telnet, or that rsh'ing is affected by anything except /etc/hosts.equiv. It also seems to me very counter-intuitive, and quite inconvenient because the telnet.hosts list is restricted to so few elements.
Chris Thompson University of Cambridge Computing Service, Email: cet1@ucs.cam.ac.uk New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG, Phone: +44 1223 334715 United Kingdom.