You should disable rlogin. It has nothing to do with telnet. It is an old BSD protocol that is not necessary in Linux. While you're at it, you should disable rexec and rsh, since these also aren't necessary. Generally, from a security standpoint, you should disable any services that aren't necessary, as they only provide more opportunitites for badguys to hack into your system.
Of course, if you're at all interested in keeping your system secure, you'll also disable telnet and use ssh instead.
But if you insist on using telnet, you must make sure that it is enabled. Start by running the command "netstat -ta". You should see telnet listed on a line ending with "LISTEN". If you don't see this, try looking in the /etc/inetd.conf file. Look for a telnet entry, and make sure that is uncommented.
Then, as the comment in the slackware version says: If you make changes to this file, either reboot your machine or send the inetd a HUP signal:
Do a "ps x" as root and look up the pid of inetd. Then do a "kill -HUP <pid of inetd>".
The inetd will re-read this file whenever it gets that signal.
Enjoy
--- Cerbere
