Telneting to a Linux Machine

[brammajere]

I am trying to learn how to use linux and i was told to have one machine for Linux and one using Windows... but when i installed the Linux machine and was able to ping from each machine i tried to telnet but the login prompt wouldn't come up!! I was wondering if anyone would be able to help me?

Thanks

[The King Ant]

You tried telneting from windows to linux?

It's possible that the Linux machine doesn't have telnet setup. To find out if you have telnet setup: Log into the linux machine and "telnet 127.0.0.1" 127.0.0.1 means "this computer"

If you get a prompt, telnet is working and I don't know what to tell you.

If you don't get a prompt. Verify that telnet is installed. If you're using Redhat, Mandrake, or another RPM based disto, you can type "rpm -qa | grep -i telnet" Hopefully you'll see something like "telnet-server" listed.

To enable telnet, if you have it installed, you can usually just uncomment the telnet line in /etc/identd.conf.

[Whipping Boy]

SSH is better than telnet, though.

[sans-hubris]

Explanation of Whipping Boy's reasoning:
When keyboard commands are sent over telnet, everything is sent as plain old text ("clear text"), and so a cracker or script kiddie could easily "sniff out" your password.

With SSH, all keyboard commands are encrypted both ways, and so it is much more difficult for a cracker or script kiddie to figure out what you're doing.
http://www.openssh.com (an open source implementation of SSH) http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ (a free/open source Windows telnet/SSH client, one of the best I've seen)

[brammajere]

Here's a bit more information for you....

I am running mandrake 6.0, i can ping from both machines but i can't connect from windows to Linux using telnet, but i tested out the connection oh the linux machine by telneting to 127.0.0.1 and the prompt comes up.

During the installation i used the Server selection and that is the point where i am now....

If any of you can help it would be great

Thanks

[sans-hubris]

Make sure that when you're telnetting in that it's the right port number. Usually it's port number 23, and from my own experience Windows tries something else for some odd reason.

[The King Ant]

Try editing your /etc/hosts.allow file and adding the line "all:all" This will allow all hosts to connect to all ports. It's a bit insecure, but you can change it later, once you've verified that telnet does work.

You can read the hosts.allow and hosts.deny man pages for more info.

Also, you probably can't log in directly as root. Instead, you'll have to log in as a normal user. You can su to root, but as people have said, telnet is insecure.

[Whipping Boy]

You can log in as root via telnet if you edit /etc/securetty and add the appropriate tty to the list (I can't remember which one it is--probably the serial port your modem's connected to).