[CentOS] SME on CentOS, telnet and MySQL

[Les Mikesell]

Michael wrote:
> After failing to install on two different machines that were running 
> Windows, I realized that one machine had a bad hard-drive, and the other 
> bad memory. So I've collected the good parts into one machine and 
> installed CentOS with SME. This was the fastest install of Linux I have 
> every seen, 15 minutes done, configured, and running, web and email 
> server. It is a very secure config, no GUI -- just a server.
> 
> One problem: MySQL and Telnet can't be accessed remotely, ports not 
> open, allow/deny files, something. I've searched the internet and hacked 
> around for hours, can't get these services to work remotely.
> 
> Anyone here have experience with the SME/e-smith admin tools?

While the code is mostly the same as the underlying Centos, the 
configuration and tools are so different that the question won't even 
make sense to Centos users.  SME server does all normal administration 
through web forms that store your entries in a database, then use perl 
scripts to rewrite the config files, and the forms often combine several 
concepts for simplicity.  For things that need network security, the 
scripts often rewrite iptables settings and hosts.allow and hosts.deny 
files - and to change it you need to adjust the perl templates that 
build these files.

> By default SME doesn't install Telnet on port 23, only ssh on port 22. 
> So I ran a yum install for telnet, manually started it. I get a response 
> from port 23, but connection refused.

You probably need to add something to the templates that build the 
iptables and hosts allow/deny files.

> Mysql does come installed with SME, however local connections only. I 
> can run mysql client on the command line on the SME.CentOS server, 
> queries work fine, but not remotely.

Same here.

> I am using Windows Vista as a  client workstation, Programmer Studio 
> (Whisper Technology) that requires a generic telnet server, and the 
> freeware version of Toad to connect to the MySQL server.

Can it use putty or something with ssh instead?

> Any help to weaken the security on SME to allow remote telnet and MySQL 
> connections will be very much appreciated!

It's probably easier to start with a stock Centos than to customize an 
already heavily customized appliance-like distribution, but perhaps 
someone has already done it.  Look through the contributed downloads on 
http://www.contribs.org and ask on their forums.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com