Can't start telnetd

UNIX Solaris
1

Hello all,
I've got a problem on a V240 running Solaris 9, the telnet daemon won't start. The error message I get is "telnetd: stdin is not a socket file descriptor." I've never seen this message before and I'm not exactly sure what it means. I know generally what stdin, sockets, and file descriptors are but I don't know why the telnet daemon is trying to use stdin. Anyone seen anything like this before?

The /etc/inetd.conf entry:
telnet stream tcp6 nowait root /usr/sbin/in.telnetd in.telnetd

/etc/services:
telnet 23/tcp

2

inetd is supposed to start telnetd with stdin set to the socket of the connection. telnetd checks for stdin being a socket very early in execution. So I would actually suspect inetd being at fault and I would kill inetd and restart it to see if this fixes the problem.

3

inetd has been restarted several times already, as well as rebooting the box. Thanks for the suggestion though.

4

Considering the nasty telnetd bug that has been uncovered, you may not want to fix this. But if you do, I would try changing tcp6 to tcp in the inetd.conf file.

5

Should have mentioned this already but I tried tcp vs. tcp6 as well. Thanks for the suggestion though.

What is this telnetd bug?? This machine is in a lab not accessible from the outside so I'm not too worried about intrusion.