Ubuntu Linux enable telnet service

by nixcraft on July 29, 2006 · 16 comments

Q. How do I install and start telnet service / server under Ubuntu Linux?

A. Telnet is an insecure service. It is recommended that you use ssh service. However sometime telnet server or service is needed. Here are instructions to enable telnet:

Install telnetd server

$ sudo apt-get install telnetd
Restart inetd service:
$ sudo /etc/init.d/openbsd-inetd restart
You should now be able to telnet to the server from Windows or Linux desktop system to Ubentu Linux telnet server. Type the following command to connect to Telnet server:
$ telnet ubentu-linux-server-ip
$ telnet 192.168.1.200
$ telnet ubentu.mydomain.com

See also:

Featured Articles:

Share this with other sys admins!
Facebook it - Tweet it - Print it -

{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Juan July 13, 2007

I tried this with ubuntu feisty fawn and it din’t work, it says

sudo: /etc/init.d/inetd: command not found

I have telnetd installed

Reply

2 zer0x October 2, 2007

sudo /etc/init.d/openbsd-inetd restart

:)

Reply

3 Raghav Chettri March 17, 2008

Running Telnet Server differs as per Linux OS you use.
If your Telnet server is not starting or you find “Connection refused…” try this for DEBIAN LINUX

sudo /etc/init.d/openbsd-inetd restart

Now try telnet..

SMile now :-)

Raghav

Reply

4 Phil Karras April 14, 2008

I’ve just installed Ubuntu Server 7.04 as LAMP & set the /etc/inetd.conf file as specified & when I try to restart the process:

sudo /etc/init.d/openbsd-inetd restart

I get “command not found” What have I done wrong?

tnx,
Phil Karras

Reply

5 nick humphrey May 28, 2008

that means that openbsd-inetd isn’t installed =)

Reply

6 nick humphrey May 28, 2008

sudo apt-get install telnetd

Reply

7 dan October 2, 2008

I would like to run telnetd, but only
on one ethernet interface (so that telnet
will be refused on every other interface).

Is there any advice on how to do this,
or hidden pitfalls? (Apart of course
from running telnet at all. But there’s
one network which i think is safe.)

Reply

8 Nikolaj December 30, 2008

hmm, I can’t connect to anything :O it’s just saying “Trying [ip_adress]…”
after that, I get a timeout :/

Reply

9 ahti kare October 23, 2009

It works!

Reply

10 surely January 3, 2010

Thank YOU

Reply

11 Oliver Luvian March 29, 2010

Gracias amigo, me saco de apuros

Thank You :-)

Reply

12 gfun June 8, 2010

Thank you man
you’re the best

Reply

13 Suspense September 8, 2010

It really works… thanks a lot dude.. I’m trying this from a month ago and it was not working.
It was really a great…. thanks once again.

Reply

14 Rajeev April 25, 2011

while trying this command : sudo /etc/init.d/openbsd-inetd restart
I got this message:
* Restarting internet superserver inetd
* Not starting internet superserver: no services enabled

However I have installed the telnetd successfully by using this command:
sudo apt-get install inetutils-telnetd

Reply

15 Parul September 23, 2011

Hi,
I ran following two commands on my laptop running edubantu
$ sudo apt-get install telnetd
$ sudo /etc/init.d/openbsd-inetd restart

Then I went to my Windows XP laptop and tried to ping/telnet the edubantu IP address but it does not recognize that.
Am I missing some thing.

-Parul

Reply

16 shrek November 18, 2011

thanks . I was searching for it.

Reply

Leave a Comment

You can use these HTML tags and attributes for your code and commands: <strong> <em> <ol> <li> <u> <ul> <blockquote> <pre> <a href="" title="">
What is 8 + 13 ?
Please leave these two fields as-is:
Solve the simple math so we know that you are a human and not a bot.




Previous post:

Next post: