Get rid of annoying port numbers at home November 18, 2005
Posted by Carthik in ubuntu.trackback
If you, like me, run a server for your own purposes at home, and your ISP like mine blocks port 80, so you cannot access your server webpages using http://example.com, but instead need to use http://example.com:8080 or some other default port, and it is driving you nuts ’cause you have to explain to all you friends that the “:8080” is required, well, the solution is rinetd.
$sudo apt-get install rinetd
then, in /etc/rinetd.conf
add lines like:
# bindadress bindport connectaddress connectport
0.0.0.0 80 192.168.0.201 8080
This will forward all requests to port 80, which is the default port that http:// requests are sent to when made to a domain name, or IP address, to port 8080 on the machine with IP 192.168.0.201
It works for me, and I am a novice, so if there is something wrong in what I wrote above, please correct me. Earlier I had set up apache to serve pages on port 8080 since my ISP seemingly blocks port 80. the 192.168.0.201 part is the locally assigned IP address of the server-computer.
Any questions about running a server from home that I could address? There are a whole bunch of guides out there so I don’t want to write a new one without good reason 🙂
Ubuntu Blog 
This really doesn’t solve the hassle of explaining to everyone why you need to include :8080 at the end of your URL/IP. I think ISPs should worry about more important things.
Some domain hosts have port forwarding to solve this issue. I think no-ip has it.
Why not just by a cheap domain name from Dotster and use unmasked URL forwarding to point to your blog? When you hit my blog (forums dot vuulf dot com) you just need to type in the url without a port spec. The registrar forwards the request to a DynDNS name and a non-standard port on my server. It even works with Technorati, using the proper domain name and not the DynDNS or the port spec.. You have to forward an unmasked URL, though, if you have remote users who need to login. Or you want to use Technorati, etc. (By the by, I do all this because I am too lazy to set up my own DNS 😉
-=[V]=-
One thing, though, if your ISP blocks port 80, how would RINETD know when something is incoming? RINTED works by catching a signal on port 80 and then routes to port #### (on the same or another IP address). It would have to receive a standard request on port 80 before it could forward to port 8080 – unless you managed to install it on a gateway on your ISP where the port 80 limitation doesn’t exist, I can’t see how it would do anything? It is nothing more than a port and ip forwarding mechanism. If it is working, your ISP probably doesn’t block port 80 after all…
I agree with Vuulf – I don’t see how this would work if port 80 is blocked. If no traffic is getting to port 80 (due to the block) rinetd will never fire.
This does not work. It makes it so that you don’t have to put the 8080 on requests you make on your machine. Sadly, for folks outside your network, all requests to port 80 will be silently thrown away by your ISP, so they will have to still use the :8080 suffix.
There isn’t really an elegant solution around this, short of getting hosting space somewhere that does let port 80 in, or having someone else forward requests to port 80 on your domain to port 8080 at your firewalled machine.
Teece is right.
i want to know how can i view my server port and which service is running on that.can u guide me?
vijay — try netstat -an |grep LISTEN
Yeah this works locally, but not remotely.
Using this trick, I have recently successfully ran a web server off my Samsung A900M cellphone connection for more than 24 hours.
Ingenious! clever in its own way. This add up to my learning at http://www.mlmtraining.org
# bindadress bindport connectaddress connectport
0.0.0.0 80 192.168.0.201 8080
works for me 🙂 i use port 8001 for my wiki, my site http://botnetgodalphamale.dnsdojo.org/
apache moved to port 8000 – dir of shared file or those i don’t care for others to see, may make a site later. 🙂
so on
# bindadress bindport connectaddress connectport
0.0.0.0 80 192.168.0.201 8080
i changed 192.168.0.201 to 127.0.0.1 & 8080 to 8001
sudo /etc/init.d/rinetd restart
input my pw, and was done. 🙂
oh and keep port 80 open – as u will need it for people to connect to u 🙂
hi,
Could you help me in installing rinetd because I’ve got the .TAR file in
my linux but when I type a command like you did :
$sudo apt-get install rinetd
then, in /etc/rinetd.conf
It does’nt work. Would me please sort me out too.
Thanks,
Zaheer.
I agree with Vuulf – I don’t see how this would work if port 80 is blocked. If no traffic is getting to port 80 (due to the block) rinetd will never fire.
Teece is right.
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