I need help telneting into my RedHat 8 computer. I'm kind of new to Linux and can't figure out where to allow telnet from other computers. I am trying to use Hummingbird's Exceed program from my XP machine to telnet into the Linux machine and run programs. All of the information I have found has not helped me at all. I can see what ports are open but have no idea how to open additional ports.
Please help me.

Hi there,

Default telnet port is 23. If that is open and excepting incomming, then getting out of your XP Box should be easy. Drop the 3rd party terminal programs for now and simply using telnet from the Windows command line. This will rule out an issues with the app you are using.

Make sure you can ping the RH8 Box by hostname or IP (one or the other) and see if you can then telnet to it. You may also be blocked going outbound on the XP box. If you have any kind of firewall software on it, disable it. '

Information other users will want to know before helping you on this:

- can you ping the rh box?
- can you ping by hostname, ip address, or both?
- is port 23 open for incomming on the rh box?
- is it open for outgoing on the xp box?
- what device is in between these two boxes and is there any kind of firewall on it?

- can you telnet to the rh box from the rh box? (will test if it is even listening)

Hi Mr.s Swillis thanks for your quick reply.
1. I can ping the rh box
2. I can ping it from the ip address and the hostname
3. Port 23 is not open, what do I have to do to open it. I haven't been able to find an answer to that question either.
4. The XP box seems to be getting out with no probelm.
5. The two boxes are on the same network so they should have no problem communicating, when the RH box is loaded to windows everything works fine.

6. I tried telneting from rh to rh and it said trying ...... and just sort of hung there until it timed out.

Should I try using ssh instead? Would this be easier?

Is telnet server running?
Have you tried connecting on the server itself?

ssh would basically be the same as running telnet except it is secure.

I don't believe Telnet is running, it doesn't seem to find it. That is why I was asking about ssh.
Any other thoughts?

If ssh is installed and configured to run as a service then you can start it via the console command:
service sshd start

I use PuTTy for windows to communicate with the ssh server.

telnet might be configured to run via xinted. Make sure it is enabled as described in the link. If xinetd is not running you can start it via the same service command. If it is already running then you will need to restart it. Must be root to start services.
http://www.chinalinuxpub.com/doc/www...-hn/xinetd.htm

Thanks for the link that was very helpful.
I noticed when I went back to the Linux box that the Security settings are on high and that FTP, Telnet, etc. are all unchecked to be allowed into the machine.
When I change the setting from high to medium or try to enable incoming telnet it allows me to do so, but when I open up the security settings again it has defaulted back to High with nothing checked.
I am logged into the machine as root and it is not prompting me for a password or anything, what am I doing wrong?
I typed in netstat -a | grep telnet and nothing came back, I'm assuming because the service isn't running. When I check the services there is no telnet listed.
Xinetd is listed and running.
I'm definately still kinda lost.

telnet runs via xinetd. You need to check the xinetd config file per the link to see if telnet is enabled.

There is nothing in that file that mentions telnet, it was set to disabled, so I enabled it but it didn't seem to make a difference.

How did you enable it?

In the Xinetd.d directory I went into the services file and turned enabled to yes from no. That is the only place i could find where I would enable something. Was this the wrong place?
I do appreciate your help on this problem, thank you.

That is the correct place. You need to restart xinted for the changes to take effect.
Once you restart xinetd try connecting to the server on the PC itself.

Sounds like you are on the right the right track. Try from the RH box to the RH box first, as this will rule out any network foo n the XP box for now. I know the default firewall settings on the mainstream distros from that time were notoriously picky. I had issues with Redhat, Mandrake and SUSE defaulting to crippling settings around that era of releases.

Also, I am quite curious about whether or not ssh works on that box. I know in Redhat you can do this as root: "service sshd restart" or something like that. You can do it with most services...may be ssh or sshd in the syntax. There may be something similar for telnet as well. Hold on...I have to check now...I support old RH Point of Sale boxes for a living, I should know this one.....

K, just verified it's "service sshd restart" (also stop or start instead of restart). Haven't found what the simple command is for telnet, but now that I think about it, I have only setup ssh on my personal boxes. Try it out and let us know. Most people will say that ssh is better anyways. It's not only more secure, but you can do cool stuff with it, like X forwarding, vnc forwarding and other cool hacky stuff.

Mr. Swillis

Alright thanks guys I got sshd to work with Putty, however it only worked once and now it won't let me connect through ssh. It gives me an error message: "Network error:Connection reset by peer" From what I have read this is sometimes an error of the router timing out or something like that. There are somethings on the Putty website that it suggested I do to make it not time out but it doesn't seem to let me connect. I have restarted the Linux box and that didn't seem to help. I am going to restart my XP box right now to see if that makes a difference in connecting.