How To Install Telnet on Debian 11

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Telnet on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Telnet is a terminal emulation program for TCP/IP networks that allows you to access another computer on the Internet or local area network by logging in to the remote system. Telnet listens to all the requests by the user usually on TCP port 23, but you can change it accordingly.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Telnet on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 11 (Bullseye).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues
• An active internet connection.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Telnet on Debian 11 Bullseye

Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt commands in the terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing Telnet on Debian 11.

By default, Telnet is available on the Debian 11 base repository. Now we install the latest version of Telnet using the following command below:

sudo apt install telnetd

Once installed, check to make sure Telnet status using the following command:

sudo systemctl status inetd

Step 3. Configure Firewall.

If you have UFW installed to connect to your remote running Telnet, you will need to set up an allow rule. By default, Telnet runs on port 23:

sudo ufw allow 23
sudo ufw reload
sudo ufw enable

Step 4. Test Telnet Connection.

Now, log in to another Debian system and run the following command below:

telnet 192.168.77.21

You should see the following output:

Trying 192.168.77.21...
Connected to 192.168.77.21.
Escape character is '^]'.
Debian 11
debian11 login: idroot
Password:

You can also use Telnet to test open ports on a remote system. For example:

telnet 192.168.77.21 80

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Telnet. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of Telnet on Debian 11 Bullseye. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Debian website.