A question about telnet in Fedora

[youhaodeyi]

I set up a telnet server in one machine, below is the /etc/xinetd.d/telnet file:
service telnet
{
disable = no
flags = REUSE
socket_type = stream
wait = no
user = root
server = /usr/sbin/in.telnetd
log_on_failure += USERID
}

Users can telnet from other machines by running: telnet SERVER_IP

But sometimes uses will fail to telnet and get an error message:
Connection closed by foreign host.
After tried several times, telnet successfully. Why isn't telnet server stable in Fedora?

[lazlow]

telnet is extremely insecure. You really should look at switching to ssh. man ssh

[youhaodeyi]

But this doesn't happen in Red Hat 9

[lazlow]

I was not directly addressing your issue with telnet. What I was telling you is that it is a bad idea to use it. Since telnet can be watched, when you enter your root password it can be seen by anybody watching. ssh is encrypted, so it is much more difficult (if not impossible) to do the same. There may be issues with using telnet on any newer distro. As in: almost no one risks using it, so interactions (bugs) may exist that have not (and probably will not) be addressed.

[youhaodeyi]

OK. Thanks your suggestion. It is really helpful. But I do need to do with telnet. Does anyone have the same issue like me?

[lazlow]

Just for curiosity why do you have to use telnet?

[youhaodeyi]

I use exceed xstart to telnet to a Linux machine. I can't find ssh in startup method of XStart. So I have to use telnet instead.

[lazlow]

If you are running exceed on W2000 service pack4 there is a known exceed issue.

[marcrblevins]

You may want to add this line.

only_from = 192.168.1.0/24

If your subnet is 192.168.1 section, if not, change the IP address range. I also don't port forward telnet port, 23 on my router. Secure enough for me since my my own lan.