Two quick things about telnet:
- Put a port number behind the host you want to go to and use it as a port checker
- Learn to script around it with something similar to a where script
So to check ports with telnet, simply add the port number ( here is a test to see if ftp is enabled):
# telnet deadlycoffee.com 21
Trying…
Connected to deadlycoffee.com.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
220———- Welcome to Pure-FTPd [TLS] ———-
220-You are user number 1 of 50 allowed.
220-Local time is now 13:08. Server port: 21.
220 You will be disconnected after 15 minutes of inactivity.
help
214-The following SITE commands are recognized
ALIAS
CHMOD
IDLE
UTIME
214 Pure-FTPd – http://pureftpd.org/
quit
221-Goodbye. You uploaded 0 and downloaded 0 kbytes.
221 Logout.
Connection closed.
#
Next, there are all sort of switches and other systems that I need to get information from that aren’t ssh enabled. Here is a crude way to accomplish what you want with telnet:
(
echo “$USERNAME”
sleep 1
echo “$PASSWORD”
sleep 1
echo “show switch”
sleep 2
) | telnet $HOST