Problems getting Apache to respond to WAN

connection refused from outside, but works fine on LAN

[kronus]

Hi everybody,

I have been trying to set up an Apache server for the last couple of days, but am having trouble making it respond to the external IP.

I am using Ubuntu 5.04 and Apache 2.0.54. I've configured Apache, compiled it, and installed it. The server is sitting on a LAN with 2 other computers, connected with a Motorola BR700 router.

I've set Apache to listen to port 54321, since Optonline, my ISP, blocks common ports like 80, 25, etc.

Now, Apache responds fine to requests sent to it from the LAN, and I can get the pages in htdocs by going through the 192.168 internal IP of the server.

However, I've tried making it accessible from the WAN, but with no luck. I set a port trigger for port 54321 in the router, configured port forwarding to send all packets adressed to port 54321 to the server's internal IP, and made a hole in the firewall for all packets with destination port 54321.

Alas, this has not worked. Going from a browser, I get a "connection refused" error after a short delay. This also happens to friends i've asked to try to get to my server, so it's not an issue of the packet coming from the original network.

I've tried editing the hosts.allow file. It now has ALL: ALL, and the hosts.deny file does not have anything in it.

I checked out the httpd.conf file, and the <directory /blah/blah/htdocs> thingy is set to "allow from all".

So, i'm out of things I can fiddle with, at least from what I can see. Can someone please help me get this thing working?

Dmitriy

[kronus]

Also, something interesting.

I've checked the error and access logs, and nothing gets through to apache from the external IP. does that mean that either the linux install or the router is not letting the packets pass?

HOWEVER, going from the actual server apache is running on, /htdocs/ is accessible using an external IP in a browser.

[jdMorgan]

I'd recommend going to your router manufacturer's site, and finding the FAQ section where setting up port forwarding is discussed. It sounds like your router setup is wrong. Also, you will need to define the server IP address for all LAN machines, since you can't route a request out to the WAN and then back in again. The simplest way to do this is to add an entry to the hosts file (no extension) on each machine. The location varies, so search for "hosts" and/or "hosts.sam", the latter being a sample file.

Jim