SUMMARY: Displaying warning banner before telnet prompt

From: Bill Maggio (bmaggio@lci.com)
Date: Thu Aug 10 1995 - 16:22:58 CDT


Managers,

Thanks for all the replies! I got what I needed ASAP! Here
was my original question:

        Is there anyway to display a warning banner to the login
        screen _before_ the telnet login prompt on a 2.x and a
        4.1.x system?

        I tried /etc/issue but that only seems to work on the console
        and serial tty ports.

The overwhelming majority said to use an in.telnetd wrapper, such
as the example from Tim Wort <tim@Access.COM> below:

  The best way I have seen to do this is to replace the line in /etc/inetd.conf
  that starts in.telnetd with a script. (works with SunOS 4.x and 5.x)

  The line will look like:

  telnet stream tcp nowait root /usr/etc/in.telnetd in.telnetd

  with something like:

  telnet stream tcp nowait root /usr/script/banner.sh in.telnetd

  The script will look like:

  ---------------------------------------
  #!/bin/sh

  cat << EOF

            This is the line to display.
  EOF
  exec /usr/etc/in.telnetd
  ---------------------------------------

That is what I did and it works fine. I actually needed this done
on a 4.1.3 system running the TIS Firewall Toolkit. So, I just
-exec'd the telnetd wrapper script out of netperm-table and it worked
fine.

Several people mentioned that the latest version of tcp_wrappers (tcpd)
has this functionality built in. Some also mentioned to change /bin/login
to a wrapper that displays the banner message then execs /bin/login.

Also, /etc/issue will display a banner but only on a Solaris 2.4 system.
I tried on both a Solaris 2.3 and 4.1.3 system with no luck, evidentally
/etc/issue only works for tty ports and console.

I can email the entire message digest if anyone is interested.

Thx to the following people:

Tim Wort <tim@Access.COM>
Thomas Chai <jhchai@bass.com.my>
jeremyh@chiron.nabaus.com.au (Jeremy Hunt - Optimation)
Andreas.Fenner@bk.sel.de (Andreas Fenner - UNIX-Wizard from PS-EAD1 [+49-711-83972-993])
ralph_b@oldham.gpsemi.COM (Ralph Bolton x4117)
Jaeho Yang <jhyang@nuri.net>
Ray Smith <rcsmith@csc.com>
Mike Fletcher <fletch@ain.bls.com>
Anatoly.Lisovsky@kamaz.kazan.su (Anatoly M. Lisovsky)
Simon-Bernard Drolet <droletb@CCG.RNCan.gc.ca>
csmoko@relay.nswc.navy.mil (Chuck Smoko - E81)
x092306@lanl.gov (Jerry Weber CIC-2)
Steve_Pyrczak@racesmtp.afsc.noaa.gov
jeff@arion.com (Jeff Mayzurk)
admin@MediaVis.com (CAE admin account)
murff@nicimg.com (Jim Murff)
koen@ciminko.be (Koen Peeters)
mshon@sunrock.East.Sun.COM (Michael J. Shon {*Prof Services} Sun Rochester)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William J. Maggio
LAN & Computer Integrators, Inc.
242 Old New Brunswick Road Email: bmaggio@lci.com
Suite 440 Voice: 908-981-1991
Piscataway, NJ 08855 Fax : 908-981-1858



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