Hello guys and gals. I am new to this forum. I got the link from an article in PC Mag

Hello guys and gals.

I run RedHat 7. I believe I have set up everything correctly, but I am a Linux newbie. I am able to ssh into my box with no problem. I used my router’s admin page to route info for that port to the IP of my Linux box. I am also trying to set up a web server to run my website. I believe I have apache set up correctly, but I cannot get my website on that box to work from "the outside world". My cable ISP provider is Optimum Online. A friend of mine, who lives in Queens, has Road Runner and was able to set up a server from his home. He tried to set it up for me from my location and also from his sister’s location in Long Island (we both have optonline), but it doesn’t seem to work. The only thing we can figure out is that the ISP is probably blocking HTTP access to port 80 or any other port we assign. Anyone ever have a similar situation? Any work around? What can I do to check to make certain this is what is happening. I am reluctant to call my ISP because I had an STMP issue prior with sending to 10 email addresses at once, and they ended up banning the STMP from my website all together. I think if I call them to ask, they may end up blocking my SSH access.

Try running http on some arbitrary port like 4500. And make sure your router is forwarding that port. Then try to access it. If it works, then most likely optonline is blocking port 80.

Since you are able to ssh into your box you should try a couple of things.
1) Make sure the issue is not with the firewall on your server (I'm not familiar with RH7 at all so I don't' know where to start here. You can try iptables -L which may give you the current state of your firewall, but I'm thinking RH7 does not use iptables)
2) See if your web server is working: try putting 127.0.0.1 into your web browser and you should get a welcome note from apache.
3) Put your web server on port 22 (after stopping ssh) and see if you can access it from outside. If this works you should keep trying different ports until you find the ones your ISP is not blocking.
4) Switch to a more modern distro, you will probably find more help that way.

Thanks. I will try that when I get home from work.
As a matter of fact, I was going to switch my distros this weekend. I am thinking about either Fedora or Debian, but I need to do more research to find out which I shall use.

The answer of course is Slackware

I think you'll find that the answer is debian
Whatever the question!

Well, I could say the answer is gentoo, but that may only be for people like me who need the capabilities.

The answer is 42! Which, translated into English or French, means "Mandriva" :lol:

Yves.

Hmmm.... well we have the answer... now what was the question?