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Telnet gone
- Thread starter Foss
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Do you have a clone of the previous OS? Copy it back to /usr/bin, otherwise it’s gone as you noticed. There was an old thread in this forum about it.
Homebrew is one option. Personally I use MacPorts: https://www.macports.org/
Yeah, I used telnet just the other day trying to figure out why I couldn’t connect to a MySQL DB. I could use netcat. Telnet is just an old habit.
Yeah, I used telnet just the other day trying to figure out why I couldn’t connect to a MySQL DB. I could use netcat. Telnet is just an old habit.
This is annoying; telnet is still used by system administrators quite a bit.
Is Apple losing touch? Certainly feels like it lately.
Is Apple losing touch? Certainly feels like it lately.
Well besides dropping programs bash, rysnc and others are just ancient. I understand Apple's rationale for not updating them. But at this point it is getting pretty ridiculous how out of date things are. Part of the attraction of a Mac for me was being *nix system. But if the tools are older than Windows Vista that is pretty sad.
It doesn't matter how ancient telnet is; it hasn't changed in 20 years. It just makes a TCP connection to a port on a remote host.
Some software is incredibly mature and does not need to be updated. It does the job perfectly and doesn't need additional features.
As for rsync, it's still very much being maintained, and is still incredibly useful with functionality being added for greater performance and reliability. We use it at our site for remote backups. It's Apple's fault that they're still using such an old version.
I agree that some old programs can do the job fine without being updated. However there can be security updates and improvements. Bash and rsync are ancient and lacking in features. I shouldn't have to install a package manager to get a version made in the last decade. I'd have no problem with Apple taking a conservative route in favor of stability, like some Linux distros. But this isn't why these are out of date.
If you're a system administrator and your corporate network uses Telnet, you now have one more excuse to tell the executives on why they should disable telnet and upgrade to SSH.
And if you're a system administrator and you can't find an easy workaround to this problem, well, you are not a very good system administrator.
There are plenty of network devices (switches, printers, IP cameras, and other gear) that still use telnet for configuration. Educate thyself before you make assumptions about why system administrators need telnet.
And yes, we can SSH to some Linux system on the network and telnet from there. But it's silly to remove something so tiny from the OS that is still used regularly across the industry.
It would be nice to get rid of telnet, but not every computer is a modern one. There are no doubt lots of systems which use a 3270 terminal still in use.
Like I said in post #7, you can use netcat instead of the telnet client. Telnet is an old, outdated, deprecated protocol that passes the entire communication (including credentials) in plaintext. You should not be using it. But if you have to, you can install it separately or just use netcat.
Removing telnet from a popular client operating system will hopefully discourage vendors from using the protocol, and encourage them to use more secure ones.
Hi,
This is how I managed to install telnet on High Sierra, just copy and paste the following commands into your terminal.
Install Homebrew:
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
Install Telnet:
brew tap theeternalsw0rd/telnet
brew install telnet
Homebrew official page: https://brew.sh/
Tnx!
