Enabling and Disabling telnet service on Solaris

Updated 17 Oct 2013 Read time 1 min 4 sec(s) (4242 views). Solaris

For security purposes, administrators may wish to disable telnet on a given Solaris system. This article provides the simple steps necessary to perform this task under Solaris 8 & 9 (updated for Solaris 10 & Solaris 11)

Solaris 8 and Solaris 9

Confirm telnet is enabled or disabled:
```
# grep telnet /etc/inetd.conf
telnet   stream  tcp  nowait  root  /usr/sbin/tcpd  in.telnetd
```
If the telnet string is commented out (preceeded with #), then telnet is disabled else it is enabled.
To disable telnet, edit /etc/inetd.conf and comment out the telnet string, ie:
```
#telnet  stream  tcp  nowait  root  /usr/sbin/tcpd  in.telnetd
```
then run
```
# kill -HUP inetd
```
To enable telnet, edit /etc/inetd.conf and uncomment the telnet string, ie
```
telnet  stream  tcp  nowait  root  /usr/sbin/tcpd  in.telnetd
```
then perform
```
# kill -HUP inetd
```

Solaris 10

Confirm telnet is enabled or not

# inetadm | grep telnet
enabled   online         svc:/network/telnet:default

To disable telnet, perform:
```
# inetadm -d telnet
```
To enable telnet, perform:
```
# inetadm -e telnet
```
To list details about telnet:
```
# inetadm -l telnet
```

Solaris 11

Confirm state of telnet:
```
# svcs -a | grep telnet
```

To disable telnet, perform:

# svcadm disable  svc:/network/telnet:default

to enable telnet, perform:

# svcadm enable  svc:/network/telnet:default

To list details about telnet:

# svcs -l svc:/network/telnet:default
# svcs -xv svc:/network/telnet:default