This is netkit-telnet-0.17 for Linux. This package updates netkit-telnet-0.16. If you're reading this off a CD, go right away and check the net archives for later versions and security fixes. As of this writing the home site for NetKit is ftp://ftp.uk.linux.org/pub/linux/Networking/netkit Contents: telnet Client for telnet protocol telnetd Daemon for telnet protocol Note: These programs do not provide encryption or strong authentication of network connections. As such, their use for remote logins is discouraged. The "ssh" protocol and package can be used instead. Requires: Working compiler, libc, and kernel, and a recent version of ncurses or libtermcap. Note that while telnet uses the C++ compiler, it neither requires nor uses libstdc++. Security: This release contains no security fixes relative to netkit-telnet-0.16. However, versions prior to that should not be used. Telnetd is evil legacy code and is not trustworthy - do not run it unless you absolutely need it. This release contains experimental login wrapper code to permit running telnetd as a non-root user. This code is not built by default. Look in the "telnetlogin" directory and the telnetlogin man page contained therein for more information. Old kernels: If you have an old kernel, you may need to apply the enclosed pty-hang patch to it. I don't unfortunately know at the moment which kernel versions need the patch, but current 2.0.x and 2.2.x should be ok without it. The following test will tell you if you need the patch: telnet to localhost, do "cat >/dev/null", and type 256 characters without any newlines. If you need the patch, telnetd will hang completely at this point. If it refuses to accept more input, but does not hang, you do not need the patch. Installation: Do "./configure --help" and decide what options you want. The defaults should be suitable for most Linux systems. Then run the configure script. Do "make" to compile. Then (as root) do "make install". Save a backup copy of any mission-critical program in case the new one doesn't work, and so forth. We warned you. If you get gcc warnings from files in /usr/include, they are due to problems in your libc, not netkit. (You may only see them when compiling netkit because netkit turns on a lot of compiler warnings.) DEC CC: The DEC compiler for the Alpha is now freely available. This is a much better compiler with gcc, that is, it generates much better code. If you have the DEC compiler, you can explicitly use the DEC compiler instead of gcc by configuring like this: ./configure --with-c-compiler=ccc It is known to generate spurious warnings on some files. Also, some headers from some versions of glibc confuse it; that may prevent netkit from working. Other problems should be reported as bugs. Note that there is no corresponding C++ compiler, so telnet will be compiled with g++ anyway. Bugs: Please make sure the header files in /usr/include match the libc version installed in /lib and /usr/lib. If you have weird problems this is the most likely culprit. Also, before reporting a bug, be sure you're working with the latest version. If something doesn't compile for you, fix it and send diffs. If you can't, send the compiler's error output. If it compiles but doesn't work, send as complete a bug report as you can. Patches and fixes are welcome, as long as you describe adequately what they're supposed to fix. Please, one patch per distinct fix. Please do NOT send the whole archive back or reindent the source. Be sure to send all correspondence in e-mail to the netkit address. Postings to netnews or mailing lists will not be seen due to the enormous volume. Also, anything that doesn't get filed in the bug database is quite likely to end up forgotten. Please don't report known bugs (see the BUGS file(s)) unless you are including fixes. :-) Mail should be sent to: netbug@ftp.uk.linux.org Early in April 2000, a hacker broke into the machine that was hosting the netkit bug database for me and trashed it. Unfortunately, it seems backups hadn't gotten done for a while, so three months of mail (since mid-January) was lost. So, if you sent something and didn't hear back, or you sent something, heard back, but the changes failed to appear in this release (unlikely but possible) - please resend. Please see http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~dholland/computers/netkit.html if you are curious why it was so long between the 0.10 and 0.16 releases. Future plans for netkit maintenance are still up in the air, but in the meantime new releases will still appear from time to time. I don't have a whole lot of cycles to spare to work on netkit, so things are likely to continue to be fairly slow. David A. Holland 23 July 2000