in myhost, i did a telnet myhost 1234, but got the below
Trying...
Connected to myhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
and just waits there...


in /etc/services i had the following
sftp 1234/tcp


then in my /etc/inetd.conf i had
sftpd stream tcp nowait meuser /usr/sftpd sftpd


i had tcpwrapper in myhost.
in hosts.deny, i had ALL:ALL
in hosts.allow, i had telnetd : 111.222.333.4


what is wrong? thanks

i dont understand if your trying to sftp, or telnet. /etc/services is a list of all (most) tcp/udp protocols and what port they run on. im not too sure what your trying to do, telnet or sftp, i can see that you want one of those to run on an unprivaliged port, (1234) right? to change that you have to configure the server, (telnet or sftp?) to listen on that port, then depending on if you want inetd to take care of it, then you would edit inetd accordingly, or if you want it to run as a daemon (stand alone) sftp and telnet usually are handled by inetd. so first of you wanna make sure you haev some telnetd services running, (probably if this is a default install) ----what is your OS?

ok well if you are trying to sftp then you have to use an sftp client, not telnet, it looks like thats why it just hangs there. you may have an sftp client already installed (again, most likley if you have the ssh/sftp server running)
so instead of:
telnet myhost 1234
try
sftp myhost 1234
also im not too sure about that IP address you have for tcpwrapper, is that just an example for us? also thats for telnetd not sftp, what you have.

i am on aix 4.3. i wanted to be able to do this telnet myhost 1234. however, port 1234 in /etc/services is defined as sftpd 1234/tcp.

the ip address for tcpwrapper is an example. can i add a line like sftpd : myhost in order for the below sftpd myhost 1234? i have tried, but it still cant work.

Don't modify /etc/services.
Use an sftp client to connect, not telnet.

You see that it connects (since there is a listening socket), but nothing happens after that because you're trying to use the wrong protocol. I don't know enough to say what's happening behind the scenes, but I'd guess that sftp is trying to handshake, and telnet doesn't understand it (because it's not an sftp client!), so it tosses the "junk" that's being sent to it.

See if you have the "sftp" command on your system.

livinfree is right, /etc/services defines the standards, you can whatever server you want to run on any port you want by configuring that server to listen on the specified port. however you probably should stick to the standard ports for the corresponding protocol, unless you have some sort of ISP restriction or something like that.