How to Install Telnet Server on CentOS/RHEL 6/5

Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. Using telnet server we can make a connection to a remote host using telnet client and get terminal.

Telnet server is not secured for remote access, that’s why we do not recommend to use Telnet server for login to remote server. To access Linux system remotely use ssh servers.

Install Telnet Server

Telnet server is available under default yum repositories. Execute following command to install it

# yum install telnet-server

Enable Telnet Service

Telnet is an xinetd based service, First edit telnet xinetd configuration file /etc/xinetd.d/telnet and set disable to no.

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

Now restart xinetd service

# service xinetd restart

Connect to Telnet Server

Now connect to Telnet server using telnet client. For this example, we are connecting to Telnet server from windows host

c:> telnet svr1.tecadmin.net

CentOS release 6.5 (Final)
Kernel 2.6.32-431.17.1.el6.i686 on an i686
login: rahul
Password:
Last login: Tue Apr 29 19:19:24 from 192.168.1.115
[rahul[email protected] ~]$