telnet

telnet

The GNU telnet client, from GNU inetutils.

curl -fsSL https://unflab.app/get | sh -s -- telnet

Installs to ~/.local/bin. Add --prefix /usr/local/bin to
put it somewhere else, or --uninstall to remove it.

Why it’s here

One binary out of a much larger suite.

Details

Built from that exact tarball, with its SHA-256 pinned in the
recipe. The binary links against nothing outside /usr/lib
and /System/, checked in CI before release.

The GNU telnet client, from GNU inetutils.

macOS shipped /usr/bin/telnet until High Sierra removed it. This puts a
working telnet back, as a single binary.

telnet example.com
telnet example.com 25      # still the quickest way to poke at a service

man telnet has the full command set.

Note that telnet is unencrypted: fine for probing a port or talking to
something on your own network, not for logging into anything you care
about.

Install

./install.sh                      # into ~/.local/bin
./install.sh --prefix /usr/local/bin
./install.sh --uninstall

About this build

brew install inetutils installs about 23 executables to give you this
one, several of which shadow tools macOS already has. This package is
just telnet, built from the same GNU source configured to compile
nothing else.

It’s also built --without-idn, which drops the libidn2 dependency
Homebrew’s build carries (and with it libunistring and gettext). What
remains links only libncurses and libSystem, both already in
/usr/lib — so there is nothing else to install.

If you also want ftp, that’s a separate package from the same source.

Upstream

• Home: https://www.gnu.org/software/inetutils/
• Version: 2.8
• Licence: GPL-3.0-or-later (see LICENSE)

GNU inetutils is the Free Software Foundation’s work. unflab only
compiles and packages it.