Hi,
I want to connect to a BBS, and they suggest I use either telnet or
telnet-ssl. I do not want to use plain telnet, and the second one is
unknown to me.
I have verified that their port service is “telnets”.
I don’t see that program or package in any of our repos, by those names
at least (telnets or telnet-ssl).
Do you know what that thing is?
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)
On Fri 22 Aug 2014 09:33:06 PM CDT, Carlos E. R. wrote:
Hi,
I want to connect to a BBS, and they suggest I use either telnet or
telnet-ssl. I do not want to use plain telnet, and the second one is
unknown to me.
I have verified that their port service is “telnets”.
I don’t see that program or package in any of our repos, by those names
at least (telnets or telnet-ssl).
Do you know what that thing is?
Hi
Debian build telnet-ssl… grab the source and build?
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 13.1 (Bottle) (x86_64) GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.11.10-21-desktop
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!
On 2014-08-23 00:24, malcolmlewis wrote:
> Hi
> Debian build telnet-ssl… grab the source and build?
That’s one possibility… But why only they have it?
I have the feeling that ssl depends on a lot of libraries and a tree of
certificates, which probably are not on the same location here.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)
Most likely because it is not commonly called for - that is most of us would use ssh for secure communication, and not many would connect to BBS services these days.
I have the feeling that ssl depends on a lot of libraries and a tree of
certificates, which probably are not on the same location here.
Yes, I would suspect so 
FWIW, I was able to install telnet-ssl from
http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3?stat=3&limit=6&srodzaj=4&dl=40&search=telnet
No other packages were dragged in, and the following reported
# rpm -q --requires telnet-ssl
libc.so.6
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.0)
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.1)
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.1.3)
libcrypto.so.1.0.0
libm.so.6
libncurses.so.5
libssl.so.1.0.0
libstdc++.so.6
libstdc++.so.6(CXXABI_1.3)
libstdc++.so.6(GLIBCXX_3.4)
rpmlib(PayloadIsLzma) <= 4.4.6-1
I was able to launch it without issue… although I have no practical use for it 
On Sat, 23 Aug 2014 01:46:01 +0000, deano ferrari wrote:
> Most likely because it is not commonly called for - that is most of us
> would use ssh for secure communication
Or use stunnel to establish the ssl session and then regular telnet to
tunnel through it.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Yes, although that would be a less convenient option IMO.
On Sat, 23 Aug 2014 20:26:01 +0000, deano ferrari wrote:
> Yes, although that would be a less convenient option IMO.
Setting it up the first time to run through a shell script would be
simple enough, probably, and then the convenience becomes sixes…
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
On 2014-08-23 03:46, deano ferrari wrote:
>
> robin_listas;2660862 Wrote:
>> On 2014-08-23 00:24, malcolmlewis wrote:
>>
>>> Hi
>>> Debian build telnet-ssl… grab the source and build?
>>
>> That’s one possibility… But why only they have it?
> Most likely because it is not commonly called for - that is most of us
> would use ssh for secure communication, and not many would connect to
> BBS services these days.
I’m just curious, and I knew a number of people in Fidonet that may be
still lurking there.
But the hassle to set up telnet-ssl is “daunting”. I have been looking
at the source package and the patches… I think it just encrypts the
password negotiation and the rest goes in plain text. There is a mass of
patches and directories with certificates and things.
I think I will let pass the telnet-ssl thing.
There are, it seems, still 3 BBSs working in Spain. Here is an article
about it:
http://www.elmundo.es/tecnologia/2014/05/24/537f111922601dad218b4579.html
but it is in Spanish, and typically google translate is terrible. The
article is an interesting read, though. It summarizes the current
situation fairly well.
The one I’m looking at (http://www.beholderbbs.org/) has
several access modes. It has a web forum via modern https. There is also
an nntp access, using SSL, which I haven’t been able to access yet.
Thunderbird just locks at 100% CPU, and others bail out because they get
undocumented/unexpected responses from it. It uses “JamNNTPd/Linux”, a
gateway from Jamm message database to nntp. If I can get this to work,
it would be by far the easiest access method. I need response from the
sysop on this – via email, we are not that daft 
I think there is also an email gateway.
It also has telnet and ssh - but after a complete system overhaul on
which the sysop has been working for over a month, parts are not working
yet. Telnet was firewalled till I mentioned it, and ssh I don’t know if
it is a mistake or it exists, or it is telnet-ssl instead.
I don’t know if he still has POTs access working. LOL. I would be very
surprised if he does, and then I’d be tempted to try just for kicks.
After all, I don’t get charged for the phone call, not as it was in the
80s, long distance call metered on minutes and seconds. I could easily
double the monthly phone bill! My flatmates were not very happy at the
time
Then he has “binkd”, which is an internet equivalent of the old POTs
binkley/frontdoor/etc software, used by nodes and points in Fidonet. For
those too young, it was a software that armed with a list of “fido
addresses” phoned the appropriate phone numbers in order to directly
contact the appropriate BBS. The protocol was automated and optimized to
minimize the duration of the phone call to the bare minimum, because
phone was expensive, and it was just one user at a time, the rest were
kept waiting for a free line (and BBSs typically had just one line,
sometimes the voice phone of the family…). Nowdays with binkd you can
have simultaneous access, that’s no longer a problem.
Most of that software is obsolete and barely maintained. Some components
are updated in Rusia, but the sites are unreadable to me. Golded, which
was the editor of choice, is impossible to compile currently because
what were just warnings in gcc a decade ago are now fatal errors, and it
has thousands of them. So I still have to use the version I built on
2001… provided I still remember how to configure the lot (and a point
was never trivial to configure, less in Linux).
But I’m curious to find out if some old friends are still there
It is of interest that a private, fidonet style network on POTs,
can be kept very private and out of prying eyes. I don’t know if
any are using it that way, but I suspect they might.
To pry it, they need old style phone tapping, and then they need
special hardware to convert old modem parlance to a byte stream,
which then has to be decoded and interpreted. And if the involved
parties have encrypted the traffic (I do not know if software for
that existed: only messages, not the headers, could be
encrypted originally), they may have a hard time to attempt
reading it.
Mass-tapping, as is possible on internet pipes, I don’t know if
it is possible on POTs. Not traditionally, but I guess the
CIA/FBI does have the hardware (to /illegally/ record phone
conversations “en masse”).
It is possible for secretive people to send encrypted posts by
direct phone call, end to end. But then eavesdropping agencies
can easily know that a message passed, even if they can’t read
the contents. Having them sent instead of direct, via a fidonet
style network makes more difficult for them to learn who sends
or receives, camouflaged in a mass of messages. But… there
are no longer mass of messages in fidonet…
>> I have the feeling that ssl depends on a lot of libraries and a tree of
>> certificates, which probably are not on the same location here.
> Yes, I would suspect so
Yes, it is so. I have just looked… 
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)