opening ports Linux

[Joshua203]

Hi,

For some time i ve been looking into opening ports on my hosted webspace/site wich runs with Linux

I managed to open ports and start some aps using tunneling in SSHTerm and nohup his is far from ideal because when i disconnect opened ports get unreliable, ports can close leaving the app still running and hammering a closed port

My question now is ...how would i open some ports permanently

and maybe even how do i make the aps restart automatically when the server reboots

i m sure there must be a few arround that know something about this topic so anyone???

[Joshua203]

hi again,

sorry for bumping this but i was hoping for a reply especially because this problem still gets me in trouble from time to time ( WCS is being a big blind hammer when it bumps into a closed port  )

i m still hoping that someone here is willing to help out because i hate openening support tickets at the hosting company 

[nylly444]

Well, to help you here we'd need to know what is blocking the ports in the first place.

Is it your server or the hosting company?
Linux isn't blocking any ports just by itself in mos distros - it might in ubuntu, but I'm not sure.
We need to know a lot more before we can help you - sorry.

I'd recommend reading up on iptables though if it's the server

PS: ports below 1024 are only accessible with root permissions btw....

[Joshua203]

Is it your server or the hosting company?

It's with a hosting company (on a shared IP), tunneling them open will work but gives me trouble after anything on the server got instable or shut down, WCS will hammer the " re-closed posts" (wich is what happens after instability)
In case WCS is still running it will start hammering those clkoased ports and this seems to activate some security because then i notice many ports are blocked and unable to tunnel/opel again (not port 80 )

I've tried looking up info on IPtables but really i m lost there and dont know what to do, i m just pretty new at this stuff and Raven once promised to send me a file as soon as i got shell access that would fix it but hmmmm well it's too late for that now as you know

I m verry happy to at least gotten a reply on this ... THNX Nylly ..GREAT

[Joshua203]

sorry for some typo's but i hope it's clear what i meant to say 

[Joshua203]

oooh and PS:

Im using higher ports than 1028

[nylly444]

You still haven't answered my question though: Is it the server itself that's blocking the ports or the gateway at the server company?

Some companies do that, for instance we couldn't run a room on the old wmw seerver because any ports other than common service ports (80, 443, 8080, etc) were closed on their gateway.
On my own server I can't run an irc room for the same reason - the company is blocking access to port 6667 which is the one commonly used for that.

Frankly I don't think it's the server but the company blocking this stuff.
What tunneling does is sending stuff through a common port, like port 80 , i.e. all packets for a certain port are send through another port, most likely port 80.
That's a way around the port issue but as you've discovered already not qa very reliable one.

So the first thing you should do now is read the stuff about provided services with your server company or ask them if they're blocking ports other than common service ports.

Once you're sure everything is open on their side you can start looking at the server.

I'm sorry to say that there is no simple solution to this without knowing a lot more details about the server you're running, there is no simple fix that works for all.

[Joshua203]

Thanks for you reply again Nylly,

You still haven't answered my question though: Is it the server itself that's blocking the ports or the gateway at the server company?

Sorry about that ..I will try and find more info on this but my guess is that there's no way arround opening a support ticket for it because I 've been digging arround for hours allready in the hosts KB, I'm trying to avoid communicating with them for a couple of reasons but if there's no other option I will get in touch with them.
I'll let you know what i'll find out asap.

Some companies do that, for instance we couldn't run a room on the old wmw seerver because any ports other than common service ports (80, 443, 8080, etc) were closed on their gateway.
On my own server I can't run an irc room for the same reason - the company is blocking access to port 6667 which is the one commonly used for that.

Raven made it sound pretty simple, I regret I never asked her wich file she was talking about.
I've been having doubts on s_imapstatus and .bashrc but even if these where the right files to be modified I would not know what to write there exactly, you can obviously see I'm a noob at this hehehe

What tunneling does is sending stuff through a common port, like port 80 , i.e. all packets for a certain port are send through another port, most likely port 80.
That's a way around the port issue but as you've discovered already not qa very reliable one.

Since i was using the same port for incomming and outgoing traffic i never thought it would use port 80, guess i misunderstood this function too :lol

Again thanks for your help sofar Nylly, I will post back when i have a little more info

Greetings,
...Joshua203

[Lagerlout666]

I get this on ubuntu. If something crashs it takes along time for the port to become free again to restart the programme if its urgent like a cache off and wont restart i use

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Its hammers everything but at least i can fire up the programme straight away when i reconnect with VNC instead of waiting a finite time for the ports to become free again.

[Pri]

That is a good command to know. I've been closing sockets and ports manually with commands that will no doubt give me RSI they are so long.

Ty Tiny

[Joshua203]

Thanks for the tip, i'm still looking into all of this but i must be honest and say this all might be above my level, i m pretty scared using certain commands and aps atm because i allready got supendend once and terminated once too... oooopz (never expected the termination to be lifted but after some communication and promisses they did lift it)

I'm sure you can imagine i must be super carefull now, maybe i shlould just forget about it all ..i'm not sure what i'm going to do, for now i've pulled the plug on the room again but i'm sure i'll be looking into this matter deeper and i might post a question or two again in the future (nice to know some help is available here on this topic )

Thanks sofar Tiny 

Greetings,
...Joshua203