The Answer Guy

Can't Telnet: Another possibility

From Walter Ribeiro de Oliveira Jr. on Tue, 02 May 2000

I read a question about not being able to use telnet to connect to a linux box... you complained about very few information, I agree with you, but I have a suggestion: isn't the problem about trying to make a telnet as the root user, and in the file /etc/securetty the remote terminals not permiting so ? I mean, for make a telnet as the root user, you need to edit /etc/securetty to allow it... Hugs, see ya

Of course that is a different possibility. However, editing /etc/securetty is a very bad way to do this. You'd have to add all of the possible psuedo-tty device nodes to that list --- which would be long and pretty silly.

If one really insists on thwarting the system policy of prevent direct root logins via telnet, then it's best to do so by editing the /etc/pam.d/login configuration file to comment out the "requisite pam_securetty.so" directive:

# Disallows root logins except on tty's listed in /etc/securetty
# (Replaces the `CONSOLE' setting from login.defs)
auth       requisite  pam_securetty.so

... assuming that you are using a PAM based authentication suite -- as most new Linux distributions do. As noted in the excerpted comments from my .../pam.d/login file (as installed by Debian/Potato) there is an applicable setting in /etc/login.defs if you're using JF Haugh's old shadow suite without PAM.

Better Answer: use 'ssh'!

Copyright © 2000, James T. Dennis
Published in The Linux Gazette Issue 54 June 2000

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