How to open the telnet in Linux

[Alan Vargas]

Hello

I need to know how to open the telnet service in this SO, i have a backup application this application connect to linux server through telnet service.

Thanks for your help

[Stuart Browne]

SO?

What distribution are you running?

If it's a red-hat based distribution, you need to make sure the 'telnet-server' package is installed, and that port 23 is allowed in through the firewall (iptables -I INPUT -j ACCEPT -p tcp --dport 23 -s ), and also that the TCP Wrappers allow it in (in '/etc/hosts.allow', a line saying 'in.telnetd:').

If all of that is done, it should be ok.

Just a note however, by default you can't telnet in to the server as 'root'.

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

After openning the port, the service will need to be enabled.

cd /etc/xinet.d

there will be a telnet file in there.

edit it.

change disable=yes to disable=no

restart the xinetd service.

In RH thats service xinetd restart

SEP

[Ross Minkov]

Update that backup application to the latest version and see if supports anything else but telnet. If it doesn't, get rid of it. (What is the name of it btw?) telnet is not secure -- it transmits passwords in plain text over the network. Don't use it.

-Ross