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I am doing a research on Telnet communication and I need to test its communication although it is not secure.

I have an Ubuntu machine 18.04 on my EC2 (I opened inbound port 23 for everyone in AWS).
I checked the status of the Telnet an it wasn't found:

root@ip:~# service telnet status Unit telnet.service could not be found.

I tried to install it with the following commands

apt update apt --fix-broken install apt-get install xinetd telnetd

After that I created the file /etc/xinetd.d/telnet with the information I found here:

service telnet { disable = no flags = REUSE socket_type = stream wait = no user = root server = /usr/sbin/in.telnetd log_on_failure += USERID }

I tried to restart the service but it failed:

root@ip:~# service xinetd restart root@ip:~# service telnet restart Failed to restart telnet.service: Unit telnet.service not found.

Any idea how to continue from here?

I checked the status of xinetd and it seems that the problem is that it uses the port 23 of telnet:

root@ip:~# service xinetd status ● xinetd.service - LSB: Starts or stops the xinetd daemon. Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/xinetd; generated) Active: active (running) since Thu 2021-02-18 16:25:05 UTC; 4min 7s ago Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8) Process: 16422 ExecStop=/etc/init.d/xinetd stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Process: 16492 ExecReload=/etc/init.d/xinetd reload (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Process: 16428 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/xinetd start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Tasks: 1 (limit: 1140) CGroup: /system.slice/xinetd.service └─16455 /usr/sbin/xinetd -pidfile /run/xinetd.pid -stayalive -inetd_compat -inetd_ipv6 Feb 18 16:27:18 ip-172-31-17-160 xinetd[16455]: bind retry attempt 8 Feb 18 16:27:18 ip-172-31-17-160 xinetd[16455]: bind failed (Address already in use (errno = 98)). service = telnet Feb 18 16:27:18 ip-172-31-17-160 xinetd[16455]: bind retry attempt 9 Feb 18 16:27:18 ip-172-31-17-160 xinetd[16455]: bind failed (Address already in use (errno = 98)). service = telnet Feb 18 16:27:18 ip-172-31-17-160 xinetd[16455]: bind retry attempt 10 Feb 18 16:27:18 ip-172-31-17-160 xinetd[16455]: bind failed (Address already in use (errno = 98)). service = telnet Feb 18 16:27:18 ip-172-31-17-160 xinetd[16455]: Service telnet failed to start and is deactivated. Feb 18 16:27:18 ip-172-31-17-160 xinetd[16455]: Reconfigured: new=0 old=1 dropped=0 (services) Feb 18 16:27:18 ip-172-31-17-160 xinetd[16492]: ...done. Feb 18 16:27:18 ip-172-31-17-160 systemd[1]: Reloaded LSB: Starts or stops the xinetd daemon..

I changed the telnet port from /etc/services to 2345 and restart the xinetd service but it still show me (xinet -d) the same errors.

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
2

Ubuntu 18.04

Install the packages

$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt install xinetd telnetd telnet -y

Create a new file /etc/xinetd.d/telnet with following entries:

service telnet { disable = no flags = REUSE socket_type = stream wait = no user = root server = /usr/sbin/in.telnetd log_on_failure += USERID }

Then restart xinetd service

$ sudo /etc/init.d/xinetd restart

Time to test from server side:

$ telnet localhost

CentOS-7

Install the packages

$ sudo yum clean all && yum repolist $ sudo yum install xinetd telnet-server telnet -y

Enable and start the services

$ sudo systemctl enable telnet.socket $ sudo systemctl start telnet.socket

Allow telnet (TCP/23) through the firewall

$ sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=23/tcp $ sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Test from server side

$ telnet localhost
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7
  • Thanks, but it doesn't find telnet-server: Package 'telnet-server' has no installation candidate Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 16:53
  • Did you refresh the apt packages by running apt-get update? Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 16:56
  • yes, it still doesn't find it. I am using Ubuntu 18.04. Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 16:57
  • Let me double check. The command work for me on Debain Linux Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 17:02
  • My bad. The command I shared was tested on CentOS-7 Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 17:09
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Remove xinetd, it's not needed anymore. I'd suggest removing telnetd also and then install only telnetd. By default uses openbsd-inetd nowadays.

But do you really need telnetd? It's insecure and should not be used, sshd is more than enough.

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  • This is for research purposes, I first need to check the most unsecure and basic connection, so it's okay for me. Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 16:59
  • I removed both xinetd and telnetd and re-installed telnetd but I still don't have a way to connect. I also didn't see any port 23 listening using netstat -ntlp. Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 17:04
  • Was openbsd-inetd and tcpd installed as dependencies? In that case you can man inetd.conf, where you can find examples. Probably adding telnet stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd in.telnetd in /etc/inetd.conf is enough, but have a look. Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 18:57

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