Topic: users can't get to web server

[Todd]

i just installed e-smith 5.0 and set it to connect to the internet with dhcp. when i give the ip address to my friends, they can't connect. after messing with it for a few days, i gave up. i just figured my lame isp was blocking me.
then i noticed one day that my windows 2000 system was getting a dynamic ip from my cable modem, and i had a web server running on it from a long time ago, and just to see what would happen, i gave my friend (who was on dsl at his house) my ip address, and he could connect! i switched back to the s-emith server, but had no luck--same as before.

do you know why no one can see my e-smith 5.0 server, but they can see the windows server?

[Cameron Monk]

Yes.  I came accross the same problem.  i assumed that my isp blocked port 80 untill i created a VPN connection into my server, and was able to connect to the web server.  The problem is that e-smith blocks connections to port 80 unless your on the internal network. ive been giving out https://myserver/ (it allows users to connect. but its not a gracefull way around it.)

If anyone could contribute to this question, as it would help Todd and I.

How do you remove the firewall restrictions on port 80???



Cheers,

Cameron

[Todd]

i don't think it's a true firewall block--at least not for me. when i'm using the web-based admin tool for my server, it tells me that my external ip is something like 192.168.64.X, which is a non-internet-legal ip address. however, when i go to the linux console, and type 'ifconfig' it tells me a legitimate ip address. when i type the legitimate ip address on my network, i get the page. outside the network, however, no one can get to it.

so, for some reason, my external network card has 2 different ip addresses, depending on where i look. i have e-smith configured to get dhcp for the external card by sending the username (the cc123456-a number that comcast gave me), although i've also tried to get dhcp by sending the adapter address.

i've had the same results with both version 4.1 and version 5.0.3 (fresh install over 4.1, not upgrade, no restore). but my windows machine can serve web pages just fine from the same connection, so i'm convinced that it's a linux thing, especially since it worked before when i had a static ip address. unfortunately, i don't know enough about linux to diagnose the problem.

is this possibly a bug in e-smith? i mean, i hate to say it, since e-smith has been nothing but good to me since i started using it around version 3, but i wonder if it's getting confused when it's writing the host.allow files (i'm guessing at the filename, btw)

please help!!!!  i don't want to be stuck with a windoze server...