Open a port for web server

Forum: Networking
Topic: Open a port for web server
started by: kenboyles72

Posted by kenboyles72 on Nov. 27 2007,00:15

I installed Abyss web server, but it has a listening problem because the port I need is not open. I need to open/enable port 81, how do I go about doing this?

Posted by roberts on Nov. 27 2007,00:36

Typically the web software opens and starts listening on the port it uses. From DSL you can type netstat -l to see if the port is open on the DSL side.

However, if your ISP blocks this port, or if you are behind a firewall/router. Then you would need to enter the parameters to open up such a port.

Is your question is specific to a router or firewall?

Posted by kenboyles72 on Nov. 27 2007,02:11

i'm behind a router. the server program was config'd to listen to port 81, since 80 is blocked by isp. But when I open the gui for the server, is says it cant listen to port 81. When I type netstat -l, there are no ports open.

Posted by roberts on Nov. 27 2007,03:12

Is the server supposed to be started as root?
Make sure the user is set to nobody in the config file.

Posted by kenboyles72 on Nov. 28 2007,01:07

the server runs as user instead of root. I've gone through the config file and didn't see anything about the user.

Posted by roberts on Nov. 28 2007,01:40

Typically user processes are not allowed to open ports on a *nix system. Look at the menu entry for Monkey webserver in DSL. It is started with sudo, yet the process is turned over to user 'nobody'.

Look at the conf file abyss and there you will see a section for starting on a *nix system as root then running as 'nobody'.