I've been looking this evening for a how-to on how to setup a Telnet server, and can't seem to find a good (ie, EASY) one anywhere!

Is Telnet part of Apache? Can anyone point me in the right direction?

No, telnet is not part of Apache.

What Distro are you using? Most Linux distros usually come with telnet already working.

The telnet daemon gets kicked by the inetd when someone hits the telnet port 23.

Look in the file /etc/services, there should be an entry for telnet:

telnet 23/tcp

This maps the port 23 to the word telnet. It is needed for the next file. Now look in the file /etc/inetd.conf and look for a line similar to:

#telnet stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd in.telnetd

If there is a comment (#) before the line, then uncomment it and if the line is missing, then add it. If you make changes to this file you will have to send a HUP signal to the inetd.

kill -HUP <PID of inetd>

Then try to telnet to your machine.

Let us know if this helps.

Gary

Perhaps you'll need to adjust your /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny files, these contain the IP/Names of the hosts who will be using your telnet server.

Telnet
 

You also can NOT telnet as 'root' by default, so keep in mind you will need to use a regular user account or alter your security settings to allow 'root' to telnet (not a good practice)