Re: [cobalt-users] Open IMAP port in firewall

[phoenix hawk <phawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

John A. Federico wrote:

> Greetings, all.
>
> I need to open the appropriate port (143?) for IMAP on my Raq 4. imapd is
> running and can be accessed through a local shell, but I believe it was
> automatically configured to be inaccessible from external network
> interface.
>
> I'm running ipchains - where is the appropriate config file to allow imap
> access? I've googled and searched the archives, but can't find anything
> appropriate for the Raq 4 installation.

I haven't worked with ipchains much, but you probably would
need something like:

ipchains -A input  -p tcp --dport 143 -j ACCEPT
ipchains -A output -p tcp --sport 143 -j ACCEPT

The basic idea is to allow clients to connect to your
port 143, and to allow outgoing connections from there.
And since IMAP is a TCP-oriented protocol, there is
no need to open it up to UDP >:) (or so, i think).

Try adding the rules to the firewall from the commandline
and see if they work before committing it to the firewalling
config file. This will ensure it works everytime you
reboot the machine.

The configuration file can be found from the ipchains
service script, it should be at /etc/rc.d/init.d/ipchains,
try viewing it for the source of the ipchains config file.
It should be located at the top portion of the script.

(ps: just a thought, if your default firewall rule is DENY,
and you want to restart ipchains, do not "stop" the
service and then try to "start" it. I'm not sure if this
applies to ipchains, but for iptables, I got locked out
of my box because i stopped the iptables service :P maybe
someone else would like to confirm this :P)


Regards.