rhosts/shosts handling in sshd

[Thomas Köller]

Hi,

after much trying and code-digging I found that hostbased authentication 
for root is handled differently than for other users. This is from 
auth-rhosts.c:

     236         /*
     237          * If not logging in as superuser, try /etc/hosts.equiv and
     238          * shosts.equiv.
     239          */
     240         if (pw->pw_uid == 0)
     241                 debug3_f("root user, ignoring system hosts files");
     242         else {

This behavior is apparently not documented anywhere, and I just cannot 
think of a reason why this is done. Can someone enlighten me?