where did telnet go? (10.13 preview)

Is it just me or is the telnet client no longer present in macOS High Sierra? There doesn't appear to be an open source drop in replacement that works out of the box, and telnet + libtelnet combination from opensource.apple.com doesn't appear to work out of the box either. I think the telnet package that gentoo uses could be patched to work, but wanted to see if anyone wanted to weigh in here first before I spend too much time on that.

Replies

"sudo brew install terminal" does the trick. You need to have Homebrew installed.

wouldn't an alias just be simpler?

As you can probably tell from my username, the only reason I created an account was to give you a +1...


I would "get it" if from a security perspective apple removed telnet as a means of preventing scripts/hacks... but there should be an interactive non-scriptable version.


Yes, this is the right choice for a consumer / no-so-corporate company, but it's actually agressively disempowering the tech-savvy-consumer base.

meh... maybe installing homebrew "as root" is a bad idea. Need to find a better answer.

This is part of a very calculated strategy that Apple has. I think you are under the (wrong) impression that OS X somehow is friendly to Developers/Technology people. This hasn't been Apple's focus in nearly a decade. Recently they have switched from being merely neutral to openly hostile. They don't want your money. You aren't welcome on their platform. You can take your nerdy tools and take them somewhere else. I'm not sure why anyone would be surprised by this. Video Editors got the message years ago and moved on, yet us, developers somehow are lingering on. OS X is now for sharing pictures of cats and browsing Facebook. Have you tried Vim in touchbar macbooks? I rest my case.

There's always ZOC I suppose.

Another possible fix:

If running MacPorts, install 'inetutils'. It contains telnet.

I was able to restore Telnet from the Time Machine

In Finder's Go menu select Go to Folder...

In the window that opens enter "/usr/bin"


Now open Time Machine and go back to a time before 10.13 was installed

Find Telnet and ask to restore it to <some folder>

I found that it restored the whole /usr/bin folder but it is small

To elaborate, when using nc to connect to a server that is a "telnet server" (and generally listens on port 23),

the options -c and -t may help it work better.


Whether nc can fully replace telnet against a specific server, depends on what the specific server is implemeting. Examples:

  • attempting to test against one of the many protocols out there that are essentially line mode oriented, with ASCII charset, will typically be just fine with nc, and maybe adding the -c flag to use the "CRLF" line terminators. HTTP and SMTP fall into this category.
  • Attempting to test against an actual telnet protocol server may not work with nc, depending on the implementation. This gets into the "line mode" issues, and character echo issues of the server side. Don't forget there are many embedded devices out there (what you youngins like to call IOT devices), which provide a "telnet" service interface. Such devices do not necessarily support the negotiation aspects of the full telnet specification, and thus may be rigid in what they expect from the connecting client. The use of the -t option to nc may solve this problem, or it may not.

All of the workarounds listed here seem to work, except when clinking a telnet: link in a browser. This, for whatever reason, seems not to follow the PATH which will see the brew/port/alias in /usr/local/bin folder


When clicking the telnet: link in a brower I get the following error in iTerm2:

Failed to exec telnet: No such file or directory
PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin


When using macs native Terminal app I get this:

[Command not found: telnet]
[Could not create a new process and open a pseudo-tty.]

Hi,


Can you send me a steps to compile telnet client for Mac OS high sierra?

I want a telnet binary file that can run on high sierra.

A possible quick fix if you have HomeBrew installed:


brew install telnet


And enjoy 🙂

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.

Heres how to put it back (and FTP)


Mac High Sierra – Telnet and FTP Missing? (link below)

0001364

Pete

This *****...