HostbasedAuthentication for root user

[Steve Weber]

after reading:
http://www.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.security.ssh/2002-02/0130.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-amd64/2004-09/msg00202.html

it seems that HostbasedAuthentication only works for none root users unless:

To work around that I can set:
IgnoreRhosts no

and `ln -s /etc/ssh/shosts.equiv /root/.shosts`

However: IgnoreRhosts seems unsafe... 
does setting:

RhostsRSAAuthentication no
RhostsAuthentication no

remove most of the risk?

If no? how can i safely enable:
Hostbased authentication and have root work the same as any user?
without managing roots .ssh/authorized_keys 


http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/networking_2ndEd/ssh/ch05_05.htm
IgnoreRootRhosts no
perhaps would be nice to have..

Also it would have saved me *many hours if something was in the man pages or the openssh FAQ that said HostbasedAuthentication "does not work" for root the same as other users