I am running RH 8.0 and what I need is to find the file that lets me tell the o/s what port i want to open with telnet. I know its defaulted to 23, but I want to change that to a different number.

Please Help
Digsby

If I am thinking correctly (need caffeine) it is in
/etc/services

Just scroll down there and hash out the first one, and add a similar one later down the line, hopefully in numerical order, with comments above and/or below it that tell what you are doing and why. :_)


Also, any particular reason you are not using ssh?

Here's a little background info on me. I'm pretty new to linux, and the reason I don't use ssh is I'm really sure what it is. My situation is that from work, the firewall blocks me on port 23 so I can't log into my machine. So what I have done in the past is change the port to 8080, and then I am able to connect. Now, if ssh would be a better way to connect please tell me how to use that, but keep in mind the firewall at work. My work machine is also a Win 98 box if that help.

Thank You for the Help,
Digsby

telnet is an unencrypted protocol and doesn't offer you protection from someone sniffing your user password when you login, ip spoofing, man-in-the-middle attack, sniffing your root password if you su to root while using telnet etc. Telnet has worked wondefully and has satisfied the remoting needs of millions of users, but in this day and age, whatever you type in to the telnet console is as good as it was 'transmitted'. Anyone looking to do some damage can find him a 'receiver' and grab your data packets and do whatever (s)he wishes with it..

SSH stands for Secure SHell that is more modern, behaves like telnet once you're connected, runs usually as a standalone service listening at TCP port 22 ( can be configured to listen to some different address) and uses asymmetric key pairs to encrypt/decrypt traffic. Visit http://www.openssh.org for an open source implementation of this protocol.

More information on obtaining, building and installing and configuring OpenSSH can be found at
http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/openssh.html

I have more bookmarks on this, so if you need them I can post those too.

If you install ssh, the easiest way to change the port on it in my experience is to open the

/etc/ssh/sshd_config

file, and change the Listen port. Default is 22, you would just change it to 8080, and test.