Telnet : Connection refused

Question

I have Windows 8 as my OS and have Debian installed on VMware player. I would like access my debian install using telnet. (I do know telnet is insecure. It's just for learning purposes)

When I use telnet 192.168.119.132, I get connection refused. I can log in via ssh but I would like to use telnet.

Debian can support telnet, I believe. How do I enable its telnet support? What firewall/networking things do I also have to enable/adjust?

Answer 1

You have to make sure that the packages inetutils-inetd and telnetd are installed. If this is the case, in the file /etc/inetd.conf you should find a line that looks like this:

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

Make sure it isn't commented using a # character at the front of the line (after modifying the line use /etc/init.d/inetutils-inetd restart to use the updated configuration)

To check if the telnet daemon is running, execute netstat -lnt. In the output you should see a line like this:

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:23              0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN

The '23' is the telnet port, indicating that some service is listening for incoming connections on that port.