Enable Telnet and FTP Services for Root user

Enabling Telnet and FTP Services

Linux is configured to run the Telnet and FTP server, but by default, these services are not enabled. To enable the telnet these service, login to the server as the root userid and edit the files:

• /etc/xinetd.d/telnet

In this file, find the line for disable and change it from the value "yes" to "no".
After changing the above value(s), you will need to restart the xinetd deamon. As the root userid, type the following command:

  % /etc/init.d/xinetd reload

Starting with the Fedora Core 1 release, the FTP server (wu-ftpd) is no longer available with xinetd. It has been replaced with vsftp and can be started from /etc/init.d/vsftpd as in the following:

# /etc/init.d/vsftpd start

If you want the vsftpd service to start and stop when recycling the machine, you can create the following symbolic links:

# ln -s /etc/init.d/vsftpd /etc/rc3.d/S56vsftpd
# ln -s /etc/init.d/vsftpd /etc/rc4.d/S56vsftpd
# ln -s /etc/init.d/vsftpd /etc/rc5.d/S56vsftpd

Allowing Root Logins to Telnet and FTP Services Now before getting into the details of how to configure Red Hat Linux for root logins, keep in mind that this is VERY BAD security. Make sure that you NEVER configure your production servers for this type of login. Configure Telnet for root logins
Simply edit the file /etc/securetty and add the following to the end of the file:

pts/0
pts/1
pts/2
pts/3
pts/4
pts/5
pts/6
pts/7
pts/8
pts/9

This will allow up to 10 telnet sessions to the server as root.