UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I want to test the connectivity to an IP with Port number = xxxx.
I only know telnet can do it. For example, telnet <IP> <port>.
But I don't have telnet installed (no package) on my Red Hat Linux server.

I searched the Internet and realized that I will need either the installation media which has the telnet-server or telnet packages, or use the up2date utility along with your RHN subscription to download the package. It appears to me it is not easy to get the simple thing installed as I don't have the media and the subscription myself. Shouldn't the package be open for free download somewhere on the Internet? Thanks.

Red Hat doesn't make precompiled supported packages available for free. The source code, as you mentioned is free... and so you can get that. But you'd have to have the compiler/tools installed already and possibly some other dependencies in order to build from the source rpm.

For the source rpms, start here:
Index of /pub/redhat/linux/enterprise

More specifically, for telnet on RHEL 6:
http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/lin...47.el6.src.rpm

A number of things that accept a port number like ssh or ftp can be used, but then it becomes a question of what is the expected behavior when you connect to the servers socket. I am guessing you might be trying to work through firewall issues. If so, then it helps to also be on the server side (if possible) and looking to see that the daemon is listening and if you see your client ip in the servers socket table (netstat -an). If you're doing NATting that would make it a little more difficult to see if the server serviced the client request but not impossible. It would then be a matter of counting connections. Try ftp or ssh to the port in question, what type of daemon are you connecting to?