[oclug]Local telnet puzzle

[Phil Tanguay]

On Fri, 10 Jan 2003, David G. wrote:
> [whacker at flamen whacker]$ ps -A|grep net
>   778 ?        00:00:00 xinetd
> 15251 ?        00:00:00 in.telnetd

Flamen is running xinetd and telnetd, that fits the earlier description.

> [whacker at caviar whacker]$ ps -A|grep net
>   988 ?        00:00:00 vmnet-bridge
> 19452 ?        00:00:00 xinetd
> 19894 pts/2    00:00:00 telnet

xinetd is running on caviar, but I don't see in.telnetd running, only the
telnet client.

Assuming a RedHat system, check the file /etc/xinet.d/telnetd.  I bet you that
it says "disable=yes".  Change that to "no", and restart xinetd by doing
executing /etc/rc.d/initd/xinetd restart

> My searching has provided no illumination on the significance of
> in.telnetd versus telnet.

Let me 'splain :)

telnet is the client side of the connection - the program that gets run when
you say "telnet flamen".  in.telnetd is the server side, that gets launched by
xinetd when it receives a request for a connection from a telnet client on
port 23.  xinetd is an "super-server" that lauches the appropriate server when
a connection comes in.  So it's used by several services on your system.  I'm
guessing it's configured properly on flamen, but no on caviar.