Telnet command missing

Hi


One of those "is it me" or "is it everybody else".


Does anybody have Telnet avaiable as a command in Terminal? Used to be there but with 10.13 it's not found...


Cheers


-Tim

Replies

I think Apple have been shortsighted as telnet is such a useful tool. I thought I was going crazy when I couldn't find it but DID find it in my BASH history....😕

Sack the fool who didn't reckon for this. I know there are other tools and workarounds but THAT'S NOT THE POINT............ We choose a Mac because we want the freedom and power of unix tools, with a bit more class than linux!


Apple will have to bring Telnet back, because this won't rest........ Telnet may be insecure but we don't use it that way...........we use it for TEST purposes. I propose a twitter hashtag #bringMacTelnet..........

Learn how to enjoy the power of netcat. It is shipped in macOS as `nc' command.

To another workaround take a look at


https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/91472


There you can find a step by step to solve that.

Thanks Amptec! This worked for me.Much appreciated.

There is a separate discussion thread here that is almost the same. I installed inetutils with Homebrew. I understand that it can also be had via MacPorts.


At the same time, libcurl IS still built into High Sierra. While I haven't tried this myself, I am expecting that some users would be satisfied by doing "curl telnet://...", "curl ftp...", etc. Heck, I think you can even use it for Gopher :-)

Ignore all of the answers that talk about telnet not being secure, one of the problems with a client having the same name as the protocol (telnet, ftp). If they called it "connect", which used the "telnet" protocol, I'm guessing there'd be a lot less noise out there. But they didn't, now any time anyone talks about the telnet client, it gets conflated with the telnet protocol. It's definitely not even close to an answer for why it's not on MacOS right now.

Simple answer: Download Putty, it's a great client that can do SSH, Telnet, and a lot of other things. Yes it stinks there's no "telnet" command but oh well, I've used SecureCRT for a long time (paid) and am very happy.