Why does telnet report "login: -h for super-user only."?

Question

I am not able to telnet in to localhost .

[root@localhost ~]# telnet localhost
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1).
Escape character is '^]'.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.5 (Tikanga)
Kernel 2.6.18-194.el5PAE on an i686
login: -h for super-user only.
Connection closed by foreign host.


[root@localhost ~]# su - admin
[admin@localhost ~]$ telnet localhost
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1).
Escape character is '^]'.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.5 (Tikanga)
Kernel 2.6.18-194.el5PAE on an i686
login: -h for super-user only.
Connection closed by foreign host.
[admin@localhost ~]$

What might be the solution ?

Answer 1

In year 2011, the right solution is do not use telnet. Switch to SSH instead: enable sshd, then run ssh 127.0.0.1.

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The telnetd daemon on your system is misconfigured: it's supposed to be started as root.

Edit your inetd configuration file. For xinetd, add user = root to the telnet service definition; with classic inetd, the user is the 5th field in /etc/inetd.conf. When done, pkill -HUP -f inetd.

Answer 2

The solution is to add the following line to xinetd.conf

user=root

and then restart xinetd service.