I'm running Redhat 7.1 with the latest build of xinetd and I've been running into this snag in setting up a telnet server. I've gotten to the point where I can connect to the server from the machine it is on, but not from any other machines. I have ALL:ALL in my hosts.allow and I have only_from = 0.0.0.0/0 in my xinetd.conf. Any ideas? thanx for your time.

Hi There,

I am a newbie so don't take this as gospel ..

Have you edited /etc/xinnetd.d/telnet ?

If not open it up and look for the line
'disable = yes' and change it to 'disable = no' , it is disabled by default on RH7.1

If that does'nt work you may need to add the service in /etc/services

This is all I had to do to get it working here.
Best luck,
Mike

Thanx, i did leave the disable=yes flag on, but after changing it i still get nothing. I can get in from the same machine the telnet server is on, but not from any other machine. I always seem to be missing a tiny detail, any other ideas?

Hi,

I'm also no expert, but I think you also need to tell the system who the clients are that are connecting. If you try telnet from another machine it'll try to do a reverse lookup to identify the client before letting you connect.

The easiest way to check if this is a problem would be to add a machine into your hosts file (if your system uses it) and then try.

Regards,

Remove all data from the /etc/hosts.allow and hosts.deny files.

Then we know it's not something wrong in these.

Now make sure your /etc/xinetd.conf file looks like this:
#
# Simple configuration file for xinetd
#
# Some defaults, and include /etc/xinetd.d/

defaults
{
instances = 60
log_type = SYSLOG authpriv
log_on_success = HOST PID
log_on_failure = HOST RECORD
}

includedir /etc/xinetd.d

---
Now look at the file in the /etc/xinetd.d directory called: telnet

Should look like this:
# default: on
# description: The telnet server serves telnet sessions; it uses \
# unencrypted username/password pairs for authentication.
service telnet
{
flags = REUSE
socket_type = stream
wait = no
user = root
server = /usr/sbin/in.telnetd
log_on_failure += USERID
}

Now if this doesn't work after this it's a routing problem to your system.

/Raz

Are you trying to telnet from the other machines and login as "root"? By default, thats not allowed.

I'm not even getting to the login part of the connect process. I tried all that with my files and I still get the same problem. I'm not sure its an issue with routing because in windows I can set up an ftp server and it can easily be accessed from anywhere. When I attempt to connect from another machine all it says is "Trying...." which is more than I get from a machine without a Telnet server set up, so its obviously seeing something. Thanx for the help so far, any other ideas or comments?

Okay.. so lets break it down.

1. You can connect from the local machine, presumably as a regular user.

2. You are not having any other obvious networking issues with the Linux machine.

3. You can not get Telnet access remotely using the same user that worked locally.

Questions:
How many NIC's in the machine?

Does /var/log/messages or /var/log/security show anything
about your connection attempts?

Can you 'ssh' from another machine?

Any router or firewall or switch between the you and the telnet server?

Are you sure you have proper name resolution going on at each end?

Have you tried putting an entry in the /etc/hosts file for the client machine that is trying to connect?

It has only 1 NIC. The logs only notice the internal connection attempts. I havent installed SSh yet cuz i just wanted something simple to get started, guess the jokes on me. There's no router and no firewall. No need for name resolution because im connecting directly via IP address. I tried putting the IP address of the other machine and ALL:ALL in the hosts.allow file. Still nothing. If you have the time I can email you the IP address and you can see the errors yourself. I do appreciate the help tho.

Email me the IP at kevin@joubert.com if you want to.

If the logs don't show conn attempts from the outside, they aren't getting there. You said no firewall or router.. what about a switch?

You should clear all references to telnet out of both /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny (at least till we get this figured out)

Have you done anything with PAM?


Do a successful local connection, and unsuccessful remote connection, then send me the /var/log/messages and /var/log/secure files. All of them.

i'm having the same problem. if anyone solves this problem, please post about it =)

I have the exact same problem with my new install of Redhat 7.1 after turning on telnet I can login on the local Linux box however when I try and telnet to the box from another machine I get a Trying..... then connection failed. Nothing is logged in the /var/log/secure or /var/log/messages logs for the remote telnet attempt no entries exist for the hosts.allow / hosts.deny and it is an ip connection with only a hub between the two machines Ping is OK (BTW Cannot FTP either) . Would really like to know if anyone knows the magic phrase to fix all of this

Thanks

heh, maybe i'll get flamed for this...
but this is my first time using RH, and even if i forget about this problem, i really expect more from it anyway.
SuSE anyone? =)

wheeeeee! lol
fixed it!
problem with ipchains
well.. not a problem.. it was configured to block all tcp connections from port 0 to 1023
so yeah, anyone who's having a problem, check out /sbin/ipchains -L
and then /etc/sysconfig/ipchains
good luck!

I see somebody else had ipchains interfering with the network. I once had a problem like that took me too long to figure it out. That was really anoying.

Linux can get really anoying sometimes!
When it does go and boot Windows. When it crashes 30 seconds later boot Linux. Works great. Windows has such great timeing wish I could do that.