How to start/enable telnet on a FreeBSD server

How to start/enable telnet on a FreeBSD server
enable telnet on freebsd,turn on telnet on freebsd

In the near future I'm planing to write a "how-to" on upgrading OpenSSH and OpenSSL on a FreeBSD server. We will need, then, to enable telnet just in case upgrading ssh/ssl will fail (not that I'm planing that :D ).

How to test telnet on a FreeBSD server

$ sockstat -4l | grep -E "23|telnet"
$
$ netstat -anf inet |grep
$ telnet localhost
Trying 127.0.0.1...
^C
$

How to start/enable telnet on a FreeBSD server

As ftp daemon telnet daemon normally cannot be ran as standalone server, but by inetd. So in order to enable telnet we have to modify /etc/inetd.conf file so that telnetd will be started by inetd and to enable inetd if it already isn't enabled at startup.

$ vi /etc/inetd.conf
............................
#ssh stream   tcp6 nowait   root /usr/sbin/sshd    sshd -i -6
telnet   stream   tcp   nowait   root /usr/libexec/telnetd telnetd
#telnet stream   tcp6 nowait   root /usr/libexec/telnetd telnetd
............................

I uncommented the line telnet stream tcp nowait root /usr/libexec/telnetd telnetd only because I'm in only interested in telnetd on ipv4 only.

Now, enable inetd in /etc/rc.conf so that we can start inetd from it's rc script and start telnetd.

$ echo "inetd_enable="YES"" >> /etc/rc.conf
$ /etc/rc.d/inetd start
Starting inetd.
$ telnet localhost
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
Trying SRA secure login:
User (root): ^C

How to check if telnet is active on a FreeBSD server

Simple 3 methods:

1. telnet to localhost

2. using FreeBSD's sockstat command:

$ sockstat -4l | grep -E "23|telnet"
root inetd 13489 5 tcp4 *:23 *:*

3. using netstat

$ netstat -anf inet|grep LIST|grep 23
tcp4 0 0 *.23 *.* LISTEN

4. using lsof, which on FreeBSD does not come by default (Install lsof: cd /usr/ports/sysutils/lsof && make install clean)

$ lsof -nPi TCP |grep 23
inetd 13489 root 5u IPv4 0xc23c2ae0 0t0 TCP *:23 (LISTEN)

5. using FreeBSD's fstat command

$ fstat |grep tcp | grep 23
root inetd 13489 5* internet stream tcp c23c2ae0

Using sockstat or lsof or fstat you can also see the daemon (inetd) and the PID (13489) of the daemon listening to port 23 TCP.

Now telnet is up and listening to port 23. Remember, I'm doing this as a temporary solution and I will redisable inetd and telnetd after ssh/ssl upgrade will be finished. Your server could have a firewall blocking port 23 from outside.

Also remember that sending passwords via telnet is very dangerous as the passwords are not being encrypted. So, if you are telneting to your server from an untrusted network you could have a surprise (the password can be sniffed). Do this only from a PC in the same LAN as the server or from some place you know it's safe.

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