Hello everyone,

I'm running a Linksys BEFW11S4 (V2/V3 Firmware 1.45.10) router in front of my Slackware box.

I have sshd running in the background and am having connectivity / port forwarding issues--I can ssh to my computer over the local network (192.168.x.x), but the router will not forwarding incoming traffic on the right port to my computer. I have specifically changed the default settings on the router to forward traffic and am generally familiar with the rest of the router settings.

I am convinced the trouble is with the hardware or (more likely) hardware settings. Running sshd in debug mode shows me that no attempts are getting through the router from outside the network, whereas (obviously) I can log in from inside.

Will post various hardware / software settings, .conf files, etc, on request.

Any ideas? Thanks for your time.

Are you trying from outside your network or are you trying your external IP from inside?

Do you have any firewall rules in place? Can you post the output from:
iptables -nL

I assume this machine gets internet access ok through the router?

I've been trying my external IP from inside--I've not yet tried it from outside. I don't have any firewall rules in place, and otherwise router traffic handles perfectly, e.g., I'm posting this from the computer in question.

Output of iptables -nL reads as follows:

"iptables -nL
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination"

Your router is unlikely to support natting back to the LAN. Try it from outside, it will probably be fine.

Another alternative is to use a webproxy like guardster:
http://www.guardster.com

If you put "http://your.ip.address.here:22" into the url box and go through the next few ad screens it should show you your OpenSSH version number.

I ran through several proxies, all of which gave the same "Connection Refused" response when connecting to my (external) address at port 22. Will give it a go from some other console in the short-term future and let you know what I get. =)

No luck from outside of the network--the router is not forwarding any traffic on port 22 to the box with sshd. I went out to a computer lab at the local college and gave it a try.

Any other ideas, anyone?

Thanks.

(BUMP)

Does the slackware box have access to the internet ok?

>>Does the slackware box have access to the internet ok?

Oh yes, everything is otherwise alright. It's just the forwarding that seems to fail.

Also tried the same thing with a Netgear router (don't recall the unit number off hand, but I can look it up) and had similar results--even when I configured the router to do port forwarding, the router drops traffic that should be forwarded to the Slack box. Empirically, this really makes me wonder what the hell is going on.

Troublesome. Thanks for your time, though.

It might be worth checking with your ISP incase they are blocking incomming access.

Alright. I will let you know when I find out.

If so, then there are no further questions. =)