Hello *nix users,

I'm wondering if there's a way to change a user's default shell in /etc/passwd to the telnet program along with some parameters.

For instance:
user:x:1001:1001::/home/user:/usr/bin/telnet localhost 12345

The above line in the /etc/passwd file gives the following error message:
Cannot execute /usr/bin/telnet localhost 12345: No such file or directory

Simply removing the telnet parameters fixes the error message, but I want anyone signing in as the user to A) not have a shell and B) be automatically telnet'd to localhost on port 12345.

It seemed like setting the user's shell to /usr/bin/telnet localhost 12345 should have worked, but perhaps I am missing something. This seems like an ideal solution, so fixing it is preferable, but alternate solutions are welcome as well!

Any help or suggestions are appreciated!

Thanks.

can you give some background as to why you want this?
I feel you are going down the wrong track...

a change to the users .profile maybe a better answer.

The reasoning behind this is that I want to run a BBS on one of my systems. The idea is that the users will SSH into the machine and be dropped directly into the BBS login prompt (via telnet). If the user's shell is set to telnet, then if they exited the BBS, the user would not even have a regular shell.