Starting the Interix telnetd and rshd daemons

Windows Services for UNIX provides two different Telnet servers and two different remote shell (rsh) servers. The two Telnet servers are Telnet Server, a Windows-based service, and telnetd(1), an Interix daemon. Similarly, the remote shell servers are the Windows-based Remote Shell service and the Interix rshd(1). The Windows and Interix versions of these servers should not be run at the same time because they will both try to access the same TCP/IP port, causing unpredictable results. To avoid problems, you should ensure that only the Windows or the Interix version of these servers is enabled at a time.

You can replace these Windows services with Interix versions, telnetd and rshd. You can choose to run these as daemons or as Windows services. Daemons do not have to be logged on with a user account to run, and so they are generally simpler to administer. On the other hand, because Windows services are logged on with a user account, you can log them on with a domain account, enabling them to access Windows network resources. Note that when running as Windows services, telnetd and rshd are normally started by inetd(1). While it is possible to install telnetd and rshd as separate Windows services, the usual way is to just install inetd as a service and allow it to start these telnetd and rshd as services.

For step-by-step instructions on how to run the Interix versions of telnetd(1) and rshd(1) as Windows services, see To run the Interix versions of telnetd and rshd as Windows services. For information on how to run the Interix versions of telnetd(1) and rshd(1) as daemons, see To run the Interix versions of telnetd and rshd as daemons.

Editing inetd.conf

If you want to run the Interix versions of telnetd(1) and rshd(1), you should edit the inetd.conf(5) file with a text editor like vi. Look for the following two lines:

#telnet stream tcp nowait NULL /usr/sbin/in.telnetd in.telnetd -i
#shell stream tcp nowait NULL /usr/sbin/in.rshd in.rshd -a

The pound symbol (#) at the beginning of each line indicates that these lines are commented out. To enable these lines, remove the #.