hello,

i am trying to write a telnet server without username/password function. does anyone know a tutorial on how to implement such function? the source code from inetutils seems complicated ... thanx

Have you looked at nc?

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A telnet server can be as simple as a socket listening on an arbitrary port. Often, a telnet client is one of the tools used early in testing/debugging of a socket-based IP server application. In the 'usual' Linux telnet daemon, authentication is seconded to the 'login' program. See the telnetd manpage.
For a good primer on writing networking applications, see Beej's Guide to Network Programming
--- rod.

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thanks a lot. i was thinking about sending a string and call system() to execute it. libevent and select() is a must-have next step.
at meantime, i still need to learn how to program daemon to throw back a shell to client. for telnet, i guess this happens after login and authentication are done. i thought some simple io redirection should do it, but dont know how.
any pointer is appreciated

i dont know nc very well (however, its functionality is well known...)
it doesnt seem to throw back a shell in client side, does it?
i want to learn how to program daemon to return a shell to a connected client.

Okay, now I'm confused. You say you don't want to use username + password entry, but you do still want authentication + login. Are you planning to launch your shell with the UID of the telnet daemon process?

Your daemon should be able to do something like fork() + exec() a shell, with the stdin and stdout file descriptors attached to the telnet server's socket. See Chapters 2 & 4 of Beej's Guide to Unix IPC for some explanation of how to do this. The daemon would then listen to the socket, and write all received data to the child shell's stdin pipe, and write to the socket anything read from the shell's stdout pipe.

--- rod.

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Be advised that a telnet client might send interesting stuff to your server that you might not be expecting, as per RFC-854 ("TELNET"). For example, you might see these bytes upon connecting:

255 253 1

which means "IAC DO ECHO", or the client is requesting that you echo everything back it sends. You don't have to echo; you can respond:

255 252 1

which is "IAC WONT ECHO", and the client has to deal.

There's probably stuff I'm forgetting, but I think the simplest thing you can do is if you get:

"IAC DO xxx"

respond:

"IAC WONT xxx"

and if you get:

"IAC WILL xxx"

respond:

"IAC DONT xxx"

and if you get:

"IAC IAC"

convert it into a single byte of value 255 and don't respond with anything in particular.

But in to handle telnet clients in general, you'll need to at least do some basic processing of the telnet protocol.

I *think*. It's been years since I messed with writing telnet clients.

pls c above

cool stuff!
i am trying to connect to remote and open a remote shell though