r* Programs Being Removed from OpenBSD -current

moonboy writes: "This post over at OpenBSD Journal tells of the r* programs (rsh, rlogin, rcopy, etc) being removed from the -current tree. Can Telnet and FTP be far behind? I say good riddance."

Comments

Re:BSD is not dying, it's busy cleaning

[sigwinch]

And, as another poster pointed out, telnet and (to a lesser extent) ftp have to be next on the chopping block.

I disagree. FTP is a fine way to serve files to anonymous clients. A lot of data traffic simply doesn't benefit (much) from security. Unless you are going to replace it with HTTP over SSL and institute a person-to-person key fingerprint distribution process, you might as well keep using FTP.

As for telnet, using it to run login shells is idiocy, but it's the only standardized way to run interactive services. It comes disabled by default, so including it is not a security risk. And when you someday need a little interactive network program *right now*, it's damn convenient. E.g., if you needed to stick a load monitor on your database server, just write a little program that talks on standard input and output, and tell telnet to use it instead of a shell. Instant results, little risk of breaking anything, and any client can access it.