On Sun, 29 Sep 2019 at 01:33, <pe...@easthope.ca> wrote: > Opening a terminal emulator in default configuration on localhost, > LXTerminal for example, doesn't require authentication. Can telnet > work similarly? Ie. "telnet localhost" succeeds without login.
Ok, the guessing game continues, we're all trying to help you but no-one has a clue what the actual question is, or why, so I'll take a turn... About lxterminal: lxterminal runs a GUI application on your host. It uses libc so that your CPU can communicate directly with your keyboard and screen in the most efficient way possible in GUI land. About telnet: telnet manpage says """ used for interactive communication with another host using the TELNET protocol """ So telnet ... is a tool for using a *network* protocol to communicate with a *remote* host. So that's not efficient at all. Every keystroke goes via the network stack, requiring individual client and server processes, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telnet The guessing game: So the first puzzle is why you seem to be in some way comparing two vastly different things, lxterminal and telnet. The second puzzle is why you have a legitimate reason to 'telnet localhost' because none of us can think of a good reason. So until you tell us what the good reason is then it appears to us that you are doing something apparently ridiculous due to ignorance (yours or ours). This is a crucial question, please don't skip it if you reply. The third puzzle is whether or not you have a telnet server running on localhost and allowed by any firewall. Because you wrote that > "telnet localhost" succeeds without login. Please show what output do you get when you run 'telnet localhost'. Does it succeed now without login, or is that your unachieved goal? The fourth puzzle is what actually is your actual question. You wrote: > Can this be accomplished by configuration of PAM ? But it's unclear what the word "this" in that sentence actually refers to. A final puzzle is that I vaguely recall from other messages that you use something named Oberon. I'm totally ignorant about Oberon, so I looked at wikipedia [1] which says that Oberon it is an operating sytem with an unusual user interface. So I feel a need to ask, is Oberon involved here? Is this question about software provided by the Debian project? Because that is the unspoken assumption here, and if that is not the case then then our answers might be completely irrelevant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(operating_system)