How can I get ftp or telnet to run??
 

I am using a Linux Debian installation but when I type ftp or telnet it simply says "command not found". When I run lsmod I do not see tcpd listed as a module (even though tcpd is in /usr/sbin/tcpd). When I try to run insmod tcpd is says "can't read 'tcpd': No such file or directory' "

So how can I get ftp or telnet to run??

I am not too sure what you mean to say. If it says command not found, then you should go and install telnet and ftp package. But I would suggest you look into SSH for remote access. telnet is old and not secure. It sends data in unencrypted format and sniffer can look into the data. And as far as my knowledge goes, it has nothing to do with tcpd.

getting ftp to work
 

My main concern is to get ftp to work. I tried "apt-get install ftp" but that does not seem to work. So what package do I download??

I'm not a Debian user so I can't check this for you, but two seconds with Google threw this up:

http://packages.debian.org/stable/ftp-ssl

ftp-ssl package
 

Thanks dougt I'll check that out.

If you want to run ftp server, then you could install either vsftpd or proftp. Both should be available through the debian repositories.