Not able to configure telnet on SLES11 SP2

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server SLES Networking
1

Hello,

I have install all required packages for telnet and still not able to configure telnet. I know telnet is knot recommended as it is unsecure, but still need to configureit.

Could any one help me on this

Regards,
Mrunal Trivedi

2

I assume you’re talking about enabling telnet access to your server rather than just using telnet to connect to somewhere else.

If you really must enable telnet access, and I’m curious as to why you would need to enable telnet access instead of using ssh, then install the telnet-server package. Then in YaST go to Security and Users > Firewall > Allowed Services and add telnet-server to list of allowed services. Then edit the file /etc/xinetd.d/telnet and change disable from yes to no. Then restart xinited service and enjoy your new reduced level of security.

But really, don’t enable telnet access unless you have a really really really, really, good reason and even then, in addition to the above you should also make the firewall drop connections from anywhere other than a specified list of IP addresses, limit the users that are allowed to log in using telnet (for (untested) example http://www.linuxmantra.com/2011/03/restrict-telnet-login-by-user.html) and if you can, even limit what those users can do once logged in.

3

I have installed telnet-server packages, as mentioned I have done changes, but still I am not able to access server using telnet.

4

Hi mrunaltrivedi,

I have install all required packages for telnet and still not able to configure telnet. I know telnet is knot recommended as it is unsecure, but still need to configureit.

I have installed telnet-server packages, as mentioned I have done changes, but still I am not able to access server using telnet.

I recommend some more details, then:

  • is it about configuring the telnet service?
  • is it about accessing the telnet server?
  • what are you trying to do? (what commands invoked? Where?)
  • what happens when you do it? (messages, misbehaviors,…)
  • which are the changes you made according to your second message?

Assuming that you called “telnet yourserverdnsname” on some machine and receive some “cannot connect” message: Have you only installed the telnet server, or have you also made sure the daemon is started? Can you verify the process is up and listening on the telnet port? (“lsof -i -P|grep :23”)

We’d need more details so we won’t have to guess that much and can more easily see where things took a wrong turn :slight_smile:

Regards,
Jens