Re: [tlug] "Password on localhost"

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2008-03-07 00:29 +0900 (Fri), Brian Chandler wrote:

> But when I try things to do with printer/network settings I get a prompt 
> which says something slightly different:
> Password for brian on localhost?

Just as a slight non-clarification to this: what this means to us old
Unix hands is that you're trying to log in, over the network, to a
machine called "localhost," which name traditionally is used to refer
to the machine you're currently using. (Likely this is a pretty short
network connection.)

Regarding which ID you're using to log in, I'd suspect it's "brian," so
setting or using the root password is probably not just exactly what you
need.

As to why it's doing this: probably someone tried to generalize a script
that used to work just for "localhost" to be able to remotely set up
other machines, too, by just giving the name on the command line or
something. You can probably see that "ssh remotehost do-some-command"
and "ssh localhost do-some-command" are quite similar variants on the
same theme, even if one of them could be done a bit more efficiently by
just saying "do-some-command." (Computer programmers are sometimes more
more fond of consistency than efficiency, or vice versa, for reasons
that are excellent for starting mailing list flame wars.)

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974   
Mobile sites and software consulting: http://www.starling-software.com