Mandrake newbie question

[Ming]

Hi
I just installed Mandrake 8.0 and i'm online etc. HOw do I enable telnet so that people can telnet to my machine (from internet). I've read that I should edit /etc/inetd.conf but I don't have that file.

Also...if I go to a command prompt and type telnet it gives me an unknown command error. Same thing for several other commands I was expecting to have. Do I have to set up a path or something like in dos?

Thanks,
Ming (/ Mong)

[slapNUT]

You need to supply the name of the machine to telnet into or the IP address of that machine.

Also you should enquire in the Security forum as to the dangers envolved in opening telnet on your machine.

<edit> Oops I misread your question. Yes its probably a path thing Type echo $PATH and make sure /usr/bin is in your path.

[ 15 June 2001: Message edited by: slapNUT ]

[bugfix]

It may be setup already! Have you tried telnetting in with a non-root account?

If it isn't setup then edit 'inetd.conf' and find the line that refers to telnet and remove the '#' which comments it out. Alternatively, get 'ssh' which is a more secure method.

Oops forgot: kill the service and restart it with:
killall -HUP inetd; inetd

[ 15 June 2001: Message edited by: bugfix ]

[bugfix]

to find telnet hit:
find / -name telnet

or if you have the locate database installed (with updatedb) then hit:
locate telnet

[mandreko]

in my default install of mandrake 8, i did not have a telnet daemon. If you are running KDE, there's a shortcut on the desktop to the Software Manager. Go to that and install "telnetd".

I'm not sure why they didn't include it, but they didn't.

[Ming]

I have a windows machine and I want to telnet from it into my Linux box...but the linux box doesn't respond. So do I have to enable telnet in the Linux machine to let people telnet in?

[Craig McPherson]

You distro probably uses Xinetd instead of Inetd. Inetd sucks anyway.

You'll first need to enable telnet in Xinetd -- your distro's documentation will tell you how to do this.

Then, telnet to localhost on your machine, just to make sure the telnet daemon is working.

If that works, telnet to your machine from a remote machine, but the connection is instantly refused or you get no response, the connection is being blocked by a firewall. If you get "Connection closed by foreign host", it's being blocked by TCP wrappers.

[Ming]

I cant find anything about xinetd in my Mandrake manual (not much in there at all). I have a dir in /etc called xinetd.d but with no mention of telnet:

[ming]$ pwd
/etc/xinetd.d
[ming]$ ls
cvs linuxconf-web rsync
[ming]$ more cvs
# CVS configuration for xinetd don't forget to specify your CVSROOT in
# /etc/cvs/cvs.conf.

service cvspserver
{
disable = yes
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
wait = no
user = root
server = /usr/sbin/cvspserver
}

What do I go from here?

(Again this is a fresh install of Mandrake 8.0)

[Craig McPherson]

You'll need to add a file to the xinetd.d directory containing the configuration options for telnet. It doesn't matter what you call the file, but "telnet" would be a good choice.

Here's what a telnet entry could look like:


service telnet
{
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
wait = no
user = telnetd
group = telnetd
server = /usr/sbin/in.telnetd
log_on_success = HOST DURATION
log_on_failure = HOST
cps = 3 30
instances = 10
}