What does removing telnet from /etc/xinetd do?

[linuxMaestro]

What does removing telnet from /etc/xinetd do?

Does that keep people from telneting to me on any port?

If not how can I prevent telneting to me on any port?

 

[JasonDeckard]

Yes. After you comment out (or completely remove) the telnetd entry, you will need to get xinetd to reread its configuration file. You can do this by sending the 'hangup' signal to xinetd: kill -HUP xinetd

You can check that xinetd is no longer accepting telnet connections by running netstat and verifying there is no listen on port 23.

 

[Dalong]

True, but incomplete. If you have another file in xinetd.d that starts telnetd on another port, someone could still telnet to your computer. It's nice, but not enough, to drop telnetd file from xinetd.d (or comment it out from xinetd.conf file). You must to the same for all services you do not need (be it telnet, time, rsync, anything). That way will be much better.