Virtual Private Server User Guide

The Telnet and SSH Services

Chapter 4   The Telnet and SSH Services

The Telnet Service

Telnet is a network service that provides a non secure way to log in and gain 

command line access to the server. Only users with a user account that provides 

shell access can log into the server via Telnet. 

For security reasons, the root user cannot log in directly via Telnet. Keep in mind 

that anything you type (including your passwords) during a Telnet based session 

goes out onto the Internet as open (non encrypted) text.

If you need to do something as the root user on a VPS Root hosting plan, you 

should first log in, via SSH (Secure SHell, see the following section), as an 

administrative user, and then become root with the su command. While it is 

possible to log in via Telnet, we recommend that you use SSH instead to protect 

your private information. 

Telnetd is the name of the server application that provides the Telnet service. It is 

spawned by the xinetd application whenever you or someone else attempts to 

connect to the server via Telnet. 

Remember that SSH is the preferred login protocol, not Telnet. The use of Telnet 

is discouraged, as data transferred between you and your virtual server in a Telnet 

session is not encrypted. If you are able to use SSH, we recommend that you turn 

off the Telnet service altogether using the inetctl command, which is discussed in 

a separate section of this guide.

The SSH Service

Like Telnet, SSH is a network service that allows users to log in and gain 

command line access to the server. Unlike Telnet however, SSH is considered 

secure because the data transferred between an SSH client and the server is 

encrypted. In fact, SSH stands for Secure SHell.

Only users with a valid shell can log in via SSH. For security reasons, the root 

user cannot log in via SSH by default, although this and many other SSH related 

options can be overridden by editing the SSH configuration file. If you need to do 

something as the root user on a VPS Root plan, you should first log in as an 

administrative user, and then become root with the su command. 

SSHd is the name of the server application that provides the SSH service. It is a 

stand alone application that constantly listens for incoming SSH connections. It 

provides support for both the SSH1 and SSH2 protocols.

Technical Training Department

August 2004

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