How do I open ports?
 

I am totally, completely and utterly clueless when it comes to Linux. I can turn on the computer. I just want that stated before I start off.

Currently, my husband and I have a Linux box/firewall set up. A friend who is not completely clueless set it up for us. Unfortunately, my husband likes to play online games and multiplayer games online. He can't because of the firewall. (Our friend had personal/family issues and is indefinitely unavailable).

My question: How do I open the ports that his game "read me" file tells us need to be open to play the game(s) multiplayer online? We are running Mandrake Linux, but I unfortunately don't know which version, only that is a version 7 or 8. It has something called "tiny firewall" but that was useless because it only asked questions and it didn't fix the problem.

Please, if anyone has the patience to explain this to me (the way you would explain it to a three-year-old would be most helpful), then it will be greatly appreciated! I'm very good at following exact step by step directions (I'm actually not computer illiterate, just Linux challenged)

Thanks in advance!
M

Are you playing the games on the linux/firewall computer. I assume not. If not then you will need to do more then just open the ports. You will have to forward the ports to computer which you are playing the games on.
You might want to find out what you are running. Because it can make a difference on the way you forward the ports. I assume he probably set up a simple firewall script using either ipchains or iptables. If it's a 2.4 kernel then most likely iptables and a 2.2 kernel most likey ipchains. The command 'uname -r' should tell you which kernel you are running.
It's normal for distributions to create a version file in the /etc directory which should at least tell you which version of Mandrake you have installed.
Well after you find out whether you are using iptables or ipchains then you can start making rules to forward the ports. The ip-masquerading howto explains this very nicely. In particular the following section:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/IP-Masquerade-...orwarders.html