Telnet - Which Password Does It Want?

[Bushy162]

When I telnet to a computer on our LAN (both Mac OSX), it first asks for a login. I enter the name of the admin user and it says that's correct. But when I enter the admin's password it says it's incorrect.
What am I doing wrong?

Please Help, thanks.

 

[kryten2]

Use SSH instead of Telnet

Launching telnet daemon (telnetd) on Mac OS X client and Mac OS X Server requires the use of Terminal.app and the launchctl command, while ssh can be enabled through the available GUI interfaces.

Enabling telnet daemon
To enable the telnet daemon, launch Terminal.app and issue:

$ sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/telnet.plist

To disable the daemon:

$ sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/telnet.plist

Also ensure that the system firewall and intervening firewalls have TCP port 23 opened for telnet traffic.

For various reasons and not the least of which is better security, ssh is recommended over telnet. The telnet protocol exposes your username and password in cleartext to any attackers monitoring the telnet network traffic.

Enabling ssh daemon

To enable ssh on Mac OS X Server, launch Server Admin:
**Server Admin > select server > Settings > General > ssh.

On Mac OS X client, you can enable ssh by launching System Preferences:
**System Preferences > Sharing > Remote Login.

Also ensure that the system firewall and intervening firewalls have TCP port 22 opened for ssh traffic.

Enabling ssh also enables sftp and scp file transfer tools.
Additionally, ssh can be configured for a no-password or passphrase-based login using locally-issued or commercially-purchased certificates. When compared with configuring firewalls for ftp, sftp is also vastly easier to operate when firewalls are in use; you need only open TCP port 22.

For remote ssh and sftp access, various options exist including Panic's iOS Prompt (which we're using) (iTunes link), the free GUI Filezilla tool, University of Michigan's fugu, the Mac OS X command-line ssh client, and various terminal emulators including PuTTY.

 

[Bushy162]

Great, but I'm using Telnet

Great, but I'm using Telnet. I will switch to SSH in the near future, but right now, I'm one step away from doing something really important with Telnet. I just need to know one thing. Can't you tell me that one thing?

 

[kryten2]

What am I doing wrong?

I don't know. Your username/password combo that you use for logging in to your Mac should do the trick.
What are you using to telnet to the other Mac. Terminal or some telnet client?
Have you tried logging in to localhost on the other Mac? When you run top in Terminal do you see the telnetd and telnet process? PID 510 and 508 in the tumbnail.

 

[Bushy162]

Hi, sorry I didn't reply sooner. Thanks for getting back to me, these questions are actually really helpful because I didn't know I could do this stuff.

Yes, I performed a telnet to my localhost, entered the username and password and it worked perfectly.

And it also displays both telnet and telnetd when I run 'top' in the terminal.



I'm now going to try it out from the other machine, and see if I can get it to work.