It's ok to have the commands in there, because you never know when you're going to have to connect to a legacy system (in a recent scan I found 250k open telnet ports).
The thing that should be deprecated is the server.
I think it's something that should be sort of pushed by folks who are upstream. As long as people can continue to use dangerous protocols without friction, they'll keep doing it.
I think it has value for users to say, "Oh, so I need to go install a package in order to continue using this protocol." Maybe that'll trigger a change on the server-side.
That was an upgrade. I think this is the right call though, sending a clear signal, yet `brew install ftp` or something might come soon enough for those that need it.
Sidenote: ruby was updated from 2.0.0-pSomethingPastOfficialRubyReleases to 2.3.3-p222
There's no problem with exposing a rlogin or telnet server over an RS232 interface, or a USB port. There is no reason why clients for using those should be hard to install.
I'm not saying they should be hard to install; I'm saying they shouldn't be in the core installation.
Also, it's been ~15 years since I used an RS232 interface (for serial interfaces to servers/routers); it's been almost that long since you could buy a system with an RS232 interface at all (aside from maybe embedded systems that haven't been updated in years). And, I've never used a USB port for a terminal connection; I guess it is possible but is it ever done?
But, really, why have something that's so out of the ordinary in a default installation?
All Cisco, HP ProCurve etc. still use serial (they tend to have serial over USB these days) interface for configuration. You can connect via SSH / telnet, but to configure the management interface you first need to connect to that serial port and give it an IP address...
HP/HPE/Aruba switches have shipped with DHCP enabled in the factory config for at least the last seven years, so you very much don't need a serial console to configure those. The Cisco WLAN controller I came across last week, however, wouldn't do anything until you plugged in a serial cable.
>it's been almost that long since you could buy a system with an RS232 interface at all (aside from maybe embedded systems that haven't been updated in years).
I don't know what kind of computers you are buying, but I've yet to see a retail, server-class, motherboard without a 9-pin serial port in the back.
My colo has a crash cart with keyboard/video/mouse. I don't know what I'd get out of using the serial port for anything. I think only one of my servers actually has an RS232 port, but I haven't actually looked at the hardware in over a year.
But, maybe most servers do still have RS232.
Nonetheless, rlogin/rcp/etc. are not useful tools for a serial console. I don't even know how you'd use them in such a circumstance. Are you using rlogin/rsh/rcp/rwhatever over RS232 to your servers? How? Why?
Well, in the past we'd use multi-port serial terminal servers and all the hosts had their serial ports as their console hardwired to the terminal server. These days the servers all include IPMI with KVM redirection. But the serial ports are still there.
As far as using any TCP/IP based protocols over the serial port, I suppose you could do something silly with SLIP or PPP, but honestly I don't know why. The whole point of the serial port is that it's damned simple and firmware can easily initialize it and use it for IO extremely early in the boot process.
I personally use RS232 quite regularly in order to hook into the console ports on Cisco hardware and some servers. Really handy if, say, SSH is disabled on a router and you need to get in to enable it.
What does it mean to expose a telnet server on an RS232 interface? Are you running SLIRP on top of it? I think you mean exposing a login prompt (through getty or similar). No telnet server is needed.
That's also a good question. I always used something like minicom or similar to connect when I had to do that sort of nonsense on a regular basis. I don't know how one would use telnet or rlogin to talk to a, say, Cisco, router over RS232. You'd have to jump through some serious hoops, I would think, to use rlogin or telnet.
It's been so long since I've worked with that kind of thing I didn't really even think through what an odd comment it is to suggest that serial consoles on routers are a good reason to keep rsh around in a default FreeBSD install. It makes no sense at all. I'm beginning to think nerds just like to argue.
The thing that should be deprecated is the server.