Is telnet package required for SUSE High Availability?

This document (000020392) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 All ServicePack
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 12 All ServicePack

Situation

#rpm -e telnet
error: Failed dependencies:
telnet is needed by (installed) fence-agents-4.9.0+git.1624456340.8d746be9-3.29.1.x86_64

Can I remove the telnet package without impacting the Pacemaker High Availability Cluster?

Resolution

The telnet package is specified as a dependency for the fence-agents package. Telnet is used by several of the included agents to talk to various switches and other devices for control. If the telnet package is removed, the functionality of the fence-agents will be effected and won't work as expected.

SUSE does not recommend removing the telnet package while using the SUSE High Availability Cluster.

Below are some of the fence agent packages that depend on telnet:

fence_alom
fence_apc
fence_bladecenter
fence_brocade
fence_drac5
fence_hds_cb
fence_hpblade
fence_ilo3_ssh
fence_ilo4_ssh
fence_ilo5_ssh
fence_ilo_mp
fence_ilo_ssh
fence_netio
fence_raritan
fence_rsa
fence_rsb
fence_sanbox2
fence_wti

Additional Information

Telnet is the client package for the telnet remote login protocol. It is often used merely to check whether various target ports (non-telnet) are listening, without any user authentication occurring. This is not the telnet daemon (server) package.
Please note that having the telnet client installed and used for port checking is not a security issue.

Disclaimer

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