UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have just installed RH7.2 Server and along with apache 1.3 and PHP. I am able to FTP from my linux box to other remote maches, but am unable to FTP to the linux box from other remote machines. The message I get is: A remote host has refused an attempted connect operation. I have done some checking and have noticed that telnet is not running. Not sure if this is the problem. I also check the xinetd.conf file to see if telnet is disabled and it is not. It is also checked to come up when the machine boots, but is not. I used ps -ef | grep telnet and various other combinations to see if it was running. I also do not have an FTP server running and if this is what I need can you point me to one that works well with the version of Linux I have. I can't seem to find one on the CD's that I have, but that does not surprise me as I probably don't know what I am looking for. Any suggestions as to where I should start or what I should be looking for? Thank you.

telnet gives a remote shell to the client. ftp is different. if you did the default redhat install you probably do have ftp running and just dont know it, to enable if first go to /etc/inetd.conf (this may or may not be the right file in redhat, but it probably is) and look for the line that says:

# ftp stream tcp nowait root /usr/sbin/tcpd in.ftpd



now see the hash mark in front? the #, remove that then try to ftp to your box from a remote computer. if that dosnt do it then you dont have ftp running, then you should use red hats packaging system, probably included with your distrobution is wu-ftp and pro-ftpd either one is good, some say one is more secure than the other, but you can research your self online and make that judgment, choose whats best for you. hope that helps.

Hi,
Thank you for your response. In Red Hat 7.2.5 they use xinetd instead of inetd. in the /etc directory there is a file called xinetd.conf that points to a directory /etc/xinetd.d/ to look for which services to run. The conf file looks like this:
#
# Simple configuration file for xinetd
#
# Some defaults, and include /etc/xinetd.d/

defaults
{
instances = 60
log_type = SYSLOG authpriv
log_on_success = HOST PID
log_on_failure = HOST
cps = 25 30
}

includedir /etc/xinetd.d




In this directory are what I would call config files for each one that you want xinetd to run. I copied the telnet file to a file called ftp and modified it to run ftp. This is what the file looks like:
# default: on
# description: The ftp server allows remote machines to log in \
# unencrypted username/password pairs for authentication.
service ftp
{
disable = no
flags = REUSE
socket_type = stream
wait = no
user = root
server = /usr/sbin/in.ftpd
log_on_failure += USERID
}

By the way before I did this I installed wu-ftp. Thank you for your help and I hope this info will help others.

Here is the /etc/xinetd.d/wu-ftpd from my box here at work (also a Redhat 7.2 box):

Code:

service ftp
{
        disable = no
        socket_type             = stream
        wait                    = no
        user                    = root
        server                  = /usr/sbin/in.ftpd
        server_args             = -l -a
        log_on_success          += DURATION
        nice                    = 10
}

It may well have to do with the server_args.
BTW, mine was installed from RPM, so these are defaults for Redhat, and should work.