From: Paul You're not tryinf to gain access as root, are you?

No but I've enabled ftp as root

From: Chris Howells Don't use telnet, it's evil. Remove it, and install ssh instead. See how you get on with that.

I assume you mean evil as in low security - I accept that but my lan uses unencrypted passwords and all sorts of other weaknesses - telnet gives me quick and simple access without too much hassle - normally.

From: "Old, Julian [IES]"

Dave,

Don't know much suse specific but Have a look if you have tcpwrapper config files hosts.allow and hosts.deny probably in /etc these allow fine control over user/host/app which is allowed in for full syntax do man hosts.allow for quick and dirty enable everything put ALL:ALL as the only line in hosts.allow

Julian Old

Tried ALL:ALL in hosts.allow - no change

From: Damian Counsell Here's a summary of setting up telnet for linux: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&threadm=3AF2B5B9.1010702%40corel.com , but Chris is right; telnet is indeed evil.

This is an interesting thread - I've compared the files on a working server and hosts, hosts.allow, hosts.deny, nsswitch.conf on the working and non working machines seem the same. When attempt to telnet the client reports connecting connected remote has closed the connection Anyone got any other ideas? Dave