Basic Telnet

By

Barron

By now I am assuming that you've already selected a paid host. You have been told to make sure your web host set your account up on a Unix box (server). If you didn't do that, you going to wish you did. Your new web host asked if a Linux box is ok, yes it is. Most use the Apache web server, and that is what you are after. If not now, later you will be working with .htaccess, CGI, SSI, FTP and Telnet. The most often heard term from more experienced users is "Telnet in and do such and such". All good web hosts provide Telnet access. If not, consider changing your web hosts.

To understand how Telnet is going to help you and save you a great deal of time, you need to know some basics. Windows is a one user at a time operating system. That means when you start windows only one person at a time can be logged into that machine. That is not the same as being logged into the network, that is two different things. Linux and Unix are different in that many users can be logged it at once from the same computer.

That is possible because each user has its own shell. To understand the shell, right now, click start | programs | msdos prompt. A window will popup with a black screen, you are now in the DOS shell. It uses the command line only, there is no GUI (Graphical User Interface). Type exit at the prompt, the window will close.

Windows 95,98 and ME all have a Telnet program that loads as a default on install. To open the Telnet program click start | run | and type in telnet | click ok. A popup window will open.

On the server side, your web host, has a Telnet server running. BTW, for the very beginner, servers are software packages, not machines. Even though some machines a built specifically for running server software, you can turn your PC into a server by just loading the software. Telnet in it's basic form is a shell program that allows you to emulate (pretend) that you are actually sitting in front of the server, using its monitor, just as if you were physically at your web host place of business. The telnet server acts a translator for the linux operating system itself, handing off commands to the server. Telnet works and acts just like the MSDOS prompt. That is, there is no GUI (Graphic User Interface). It only uses the command line.

Open your Telnet program and lets get used to what you see. At the top of the window is the normal tool bar, and you have a cursor in the white area below that. Click file | remote system. There is a smaller popup that appears with three fields.

The first field asks you for the "Host Name" you want to connect to. Telnet will except either the IP address or a URL, 111.222.333.444 or telnet.foo.com. If you don't know this information, contact your web host, they will give it to you.

The next field asks for the port, but defaults to the option "telnet". Telnet uses the widely excepted port 23. The telnet program uses this as a default also, so don't change it unless your web host tells you to.

The next field asks for "Term type". This is the terminal language you want to use. The default is "vt100". This is widely excepted, don't change it unless your web host tells you to. Now click "connect".

Once connected, you may or not see on the first line the Host name you are connected to. Then you will see a prompt that asks for your username. Type that in and press enter. Then you will be asked for your password. Type that in and press enter. You will not see your password appear on the screen, so go slow and be accurate. WARNING: Linux is case sensitive. EVERYTHING is case sensitive including, usernames, passwords, files, directories and commands. Username, username, USERNAME are all different to Linux. The default for Linux is three tries to log in. If you don't succeed in three tries, the telnet server will disconnect you and you will need to re-connect. If you mess up and get disconnected several times you will look like a hacker and at some point web host might ban you. Afterwards, there will be a short pause while your being authenticated, then a prompt will appear.

Ok, now you are logged in and the fun really begins. The system administrators at the web hosts are very good at what they do, that is, you can't mess anything up but your own files, so don't be afraid to experiment.

The first thing you see is the prompt. It is also the first difference you see between DOS and linux. Every host is different but you will see something like "nix:user$" or you might only see a symbol "#". The part before the colon is you, or the name the webhost gave to you, it may not be your username. The part after the colon is the directory you are in, this may or not be your username. This is your default directory assigned to you. This may or may not be the "root" directory off your web pages. Again, if you don't know which directory your pages are served from, contact your web host. The symbol "$" means different things at different times to linux and programmers, but you will always see a symbol and means nothing to you and me as it relates to the prompt. DOS uses the ">", C:\windows>.

Continued ..