I am an experienced Linux user who has installed Slackware on a machine for the first time since version 2.6. I have used rsync for a few years to copy information from one machine to another. I was copying from Debian to Slackware with no problems (when I was signed on to Slackware). The other day I was signed on to the Debian box and did tried to rsync from Slackware to Debian. I was prompted for a password by Slackware. The specific account has no password on it. Normally I would have modified some policies in pam.d to allow passwordless actions. Slackware 10 does not seem to use Pam.d. I can ftp to and from Slackware without password problems. Can someone suggest what else I can try?

try rsync -e ssh and play with the ssh public keys to not use password, works well

not sure if it'll help but...are you using rsh or ssh as the rsync pipe? If it's ssh, make sure there are no either no passwords on the keys (not recommended) or your ssh-agent is holding you key (ssh-add). I've had quirks with that. Also, are the ssh versions the same (i.e. commercial vs openssh). I know debian uses openssh but dunno about slack. I've had major headaches with suse still using commercial ssh (ugh!).

strange though. if you can ssh without dramas from debian box to slack box, you should be able to rsync without problems, because it just pipes through SSH IIRC (rsync -e ssh).

just stabs in the dark...

Well for me rsync -e ssh works well, I rsync a Mac OSX machine to a Slackware one without any problem this way

[edit]
I followed this great tutorial
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ticle&artid=80

I had seen references to the use of ssh with rsync, and judging from the responses here it should work. I guess implicit though, was trying to understand exactly what was happening. I have set up the machines so that I can rlogin from one to another, with no password being requested; the same with telnet, the same with ftp. Why is the password prompt being requested, and rejected when I just press the enter key. Thank you all for your suggestions.

I think the devil might be in the detail here. are you using .rhosts files or something? that's the easiest way. also note that rlogin and rsh are slightly different things, although in principle rsh should log you in using rlogin if you don't specify a command. At least, that's how things *used* to work. I don't even have bona fide rlogin/rsh/rcp/rexec commands anymore, just symlinks to ssh and friends.

Since its waaay more secure anyway, have you tried going down the ssh route? unless you're transferring *huge* amounts of data, you shouldn't be bothered too much by the encryption overhead.

I'm stumped...