I have just installed Fedora 3 and then followed the tutorial at:
linuxhomenetworking.com (chapter 16) to install the Telnet-server.

I can telnet to 127.0.0.1 using the command "telnet 127.0.0.1" from the actual linux PC. (i.e the PC can telnet to itself - the localhost).

But when I try to telnet to the linux PC from another PC on the LAN using the command "telnet 192.168.0.20" I get the error:

Connecting To 192.168.0.20...Could not open connection to the host, on port 23: Connect failed

The other PC's on the lan have ip address 192.168.0.30 & 192.168.0.4. I can ping 192.168.0.20 from these PCs.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can fix the fault?

Thanks.

You probably don't have your firewall set to alloqw connections on that port. Check that.

I don't have the firewall turned on on my 192.168.0.30 or 192.168.0.4 windows PCs .

Are you refering to some kind of default firewall on my linux PC (192.168.0.20). I haven't deliberately turned on a firewall on my linux PC. If it turns on by default (after a standard SERVER install), how do you disable it?

don't use telnet, use ssh. it's possible that the telnet server is defaulting to only allow local connections as it's so insecure compared to the wonderful ssh.

I agree that ssh is more secure, and is encrypted and is far superior to telnet, and all that, but this is a test/play PC and I am determined to get TELNET to work. Once I've solved the TELNET mystery I will then go on and try ssh, etc. I've already had a lot of success playing with the Apache web server, but this TELNET thing has really got me foxed.

I've tried all the obvious things like checking that disable=no in /etc/xinetd.d/telnet
and even tried restarting the service inetd with: "service xinetd restart"

I can't see what I could possibly be doing wrong.

Are there any experts out there with any suggestions on what I might be doing wrong?

OK, I just started sshd using the command: /sbin/chkconfig sshd on

I then started my ssh client on my windows PC and it worked fine. I can now talk to my linux PC remotely (woo hoo). However, this doesn't answer what's going wrong with my telnet server.

Please post suggestions here at your next earliest convenience. Thanks

well if the telnet server is running via xinetd, then what does the /etc/xinetd.d/telnetd file say?

>> well if the telnet server is running via xinetd,
>> then what does the /etc/xinetd.d/telnetd file say?

Hmmm, I'm too much of a newbie to know exactly what that question means. I only mentioned that I've checked that disable=no in /etc/xinetd.d/telnet , because another site mentioned it.

I don't have a telnetd file in /etc/xinetd.d/ as you suggest. I do however have a telnet file in that directory, and it looks like this:

[root@servo xinetd.d]# more telnet
# default: on
# description: The telnet server serves telnet sessions; it uses \
# unencrypted username/password pairs for authentication.
service telnet
{
disable = no
flags = REUSE
socket_type = stream
wait = no
user = root
server = /usr/sbin/in.telnetd
log_on_failure += USERID
}

Does that give you any clue about my TELNET problems?