Setting Up a Telnet Server

You will find the Telnet server installation packages in Synaptic under the telnetd package. Once installed, select Administration, Services and enable Telnet. Note your IP address while you are here (run ifconfig with sudo).

With that done, you can now fire up your other Linux box and type telnet <your IP>. You are prompted to enter your username and password. The whole conversation should look like this:

[paul@susannah ~]$ telnet 10.0.0.1
Trying 10.0.0.1…
Connected to 10.0.0.1 (10.0.0.1)
Escape character is '^]'.
Welcome to Caitlin
Running Ubuntu

* All access is logged *

login: paul
Password:
Last login: Sat Jul 9 12:05:41 from 10.0.0.5
[paul@caitlin ~]$

Tip

Note that the server responds with Welcome to Caitlin, running Ubuntu, which is a customized message. Your machine will probably respond with Ubuntu and some version information. This is insecure: giving away version numbers is never a smart move. In fact, even saying Ubuntu is questionable. Edit the issue and issue.net files in your /etc directory to change these messages.

Running the w command now shows you as connecting from the external IP address.