I've installed Mandrake 9.0 on my old Hewlett Packard 6745C computer. I wish to be able to Telnet to the box from another computer but am having some problems.

The computer shares a cable modem connection with another computer through a router, but I've set the router to forward all port 23 requests (as well as 80 and 21 since I'm planning on setting up a small web server) to the linux box.

My telnet session looks similar to this:

>Telnet
>open xx.xxx.xx.xxx
Connecting to xx.xxx.xx.xxx... Could not open connection to the host, on port 23: Connect failed

Anyone have any ideas as to what my problem could be and what I could do to remedy it?

Thanks, all.

-Tim

I believe that you're router/firewall is setup correctly, I think think the problem you are running into is with telnet. Did you choose to install Telnet daemon on the installation, because as far as i know, most distributions won't install it by default due to the security issues of it. You're best bet is to use SSH for remote access, encrypted sessions is a lot more comfortable then with plain-text telnet.

SSH runs on port 22, so you can just change that on your firewall, Mandrake should have installed it by default. If you use ms windows to access your box, then you can pick up an ssh client in windows, Putty is my fav, just search google for it.

To connect a server:

ssh -l username host

for example, to connect to your box would be something like:

ssh -l bluephoenix 10.248.101.2


If you want to stick to telnet, then make sure that you have the server daemon installed, though like I said, almost anyone would suggest you run SSH instead.

Hrm, I could have sworn I replied with a thank you note and my experiences detailing my adventures installing SSH (yes, I decided to go the ssh route)... but it was late and I was tired; perhaps I clicked the CANCEL button instead of POST. sigh.

Sorry. But thanks, I've decided to go the SSH route... It wasn't automatically installed by Mdk 9 but I found it on the ISOs and I used Mandrake Control Center to install it. I had to do the whole key thing and the configure file myself (thank god for the internet!). I'm definately going to do some reading up on ssh (before you mentioned it I'd never heard of it!) later this evening.

But for right now, it works but I do get an error when I start it:

Disableing protocol 1. Could not load host key.

What's protocol 1 vs protocol 2? And if it can't load a key, then why does it work? If it can't find a security key then shouldn't that be a fatal error?

...side note: you can tell I'm a newbie; being able to shut down my linux box completely with a halt command through ssh just made my night last night and all day today

-Tim

I have probably installed SSH hundreds of times, and i've never ran into any problems with it. Wether it be through RPM, deb or tarball. You're best bet is the use SSH v2 protocol just because it's newer, and most likely more secure. Now, as for your key, i believe you can generate that manually, a quick look at SirPlaya's SSH guide shows that you can issue the command:



to generate your key.

As for the disabling protocol 1 because it cannot load the host key, that's fine. We don't want to use protocol 1 anyways. If you don't like seeing that message, you can edit your sshd config file (i think it's in /etc/ssh/sshd_config) and comment out (put a # at the begining of the line) where it says "Protocol 1". If it is the same line as it states protocol 2, then just delete out the one. I'm not sure what it will look like because i've always had protocol 1 disabled.

Thanks. It's all working fine and dandy now

I actually fumbled around with it for a couple of hours earlier in the week and just wasn't getting anywhere fast. So I got frustrated, put it off to the weekend, and then gave it another try today.

I started fresh, installed opensshd-3.whatever . needed to update a few libraries, but once all was said and done all I had to do was the .configure/make/makeinstall. Didn't have to mess with config files, or anything.

Hey, I'm not knockin' it. It works, I'm not going to break it

-Tim