I just setup a Linux box running Ubuntu-7.10 to serve as my home's file server as well as being a Torrent box. I followed several different How-To's and got it all up and running. However I've run into a bump with the Apache server. I have it setup so that I can add/remove/seed torrents remotely when I'm not on my network at home. When I point my browser to http://localhost it works fine, also when I use my IP. But as soon as I leave my home network and try to use it say at school, nothing comes up. I type in my dedicated IP but nothing happens. I tried pinging it but it comes back as "Destination Net Unreachable" I asked a friend to try pinging it from his house and it seemed to work for him but he couldn't view the page.

Any ideas as to what might have gone wrong?

Thanks,
Jeff

I just setup a Linux box running Ubuntu-7.10 to serve as my home's file server as well as being a Torrent box. I followed several different How-To's and got it all up and running. However I've run into a bump with the Apache server. I have it setup so that I can add/remove/seed torrents remotely when I'm not on my network at home. When I point my browser to http://localhost it works fine, also when I use my IP. But as soon as I leave my home network and try to use it say at school, nothing comes up. I type in my dedicated IP but nothing happens. I tried pinging it but it comes back as "Destination Net Unreachable" I asked a friend to try pinging it from his house and it seemed to work for him but he couldn't view the page.

Any ideas as to what might have gone wrong?

Thanks,
Jeff

So, what type of internet connection do you have?

Do you have a router?

If this is your home network, I'm guessing you have something like a cable or dsl modem, perhaps going into a small router. If so, do you have port forwarding configured on the router to send traffic to your server?

When you say you try your IP and it works when you're at home, you mean your public IP address right? Not your internal network private IP right?

Just trying to get clarification.

Hi,

There are several possibilities. How do you connect to the internet? Do you have a home router? If so... Are you using your router's configuration to point to your box?
Try doing this:

should give you your ip, if this ip begins with 192 or 168 chances are your router is not letting anything outside your network go in. And we could help you with that.

Now, if it's connected directly to the internet you might be being blocked by a firewall.

For both cases you will need a dynamic ip address that you can easily get at dyndns.org and ddclient installed in your box (connected directly) or user and password configured in your router. The dynamic address will be something like: wow.homelinux.net.

So, short: Router? and... What's your IP?

I have a Motorola cable modem then a Linksys WRT54GS connected to that. The Linux box is hardwired to the linksys router with a static IP. I have gone in and made sure that port 80 is forwarded to the Linux box by the Linksys router. And when I say I try my IP I am using my public IP.

I have a Motorola cable modem and then a Linksys WRT54GS connected to that. My linux box connects via hardwire to the Linksys router. I have set a static IP on the linux box of 192.168.1.109 and gone into the Linksys config and forwarded port 80 to that IP.

I made an account at no-ip.com to see if it would work but it does the same thing. It can't reach it outside the network but on the internal it works fine.

Your ISP might have port 80 blocked. Have you tried something like running apache on a non standard port such as 8080, then going to that ip:8080?

Before we moved, our local ISP did that, but now I have it wide open.

I tried to setup apache to listen on port 8080 but I'm not sure how to do that right. I went to my httpd.conf file and its blank but I have a ports.conf and changed it from 'Listen 80' to 'Listen 8080' and made my router forward port 8080 to the linux setup. Still not able to get anything from the outside.

School -> Internet -> ISP -> Modem -> Router -> Home server ; Does not work.
Friend -> Internet -> ISP -> Modem -> Router -> Home server ; Maybe.

'traceroute' may offer some clues.
Port blocking at ISP, home firewall rules are possibilities if you are confident that the modem and router are configured correctly.

I am not sure on Ubuntu's apache conf, I will put up a quick vm of it sometime today, but the other q's, once you changed the ports file, could you still get in from the local network? Did you have to change the URL to include the :8080 ?

But, to start, I would grab a copy of a port scanner like nmap for linux. Next, make sure apache is listening on 8080, and it is restarted. Make sure no firewall is running and then just port scan that box;
nmap -P0 serverip <enter>, after a few min's, it will come back with any open ports that box is listening on, if you see 80, then apache is setup wrong, if you see 8080, then apache is right, and we can goto the next step, the outside world.

Start there, I will get a copy of vm up shortly.

Hi,

Sorry for the delay. Ok, so far you're ok. Now, your IP is NOT 192.168.1.109, don't use this from the outside. If you go to your Linksys at 192.168.1.1 :

(1) If you go to the STATUS tab you'll see information like this:
Your external IP is the one here. (128.189.169.19) This is the one you'll use from the outside, this and the rest are set, in my case, automatically.

(2) If you go to the APPLICATIONS AND GAMING tab, be sure that you have marked the "enabled" box in the appropriate Port Range Forward sub-tab, and something like this:
Application "whatever" Start: 80, End: 80, Protocol Both. Ip: 192.168.1.109.

(3) You will see in the SETUP tab a sub-tab called DDNS (Dynamic DNS) there you'll set up your dynamic account. I recommend using DYNDNS, it's in the list. You go to dyndns, set up an account, set your username and password here and voila.

It should work. Cheers,

>>>> with your setting forget about ddclient (it's a pain in the butt to set it up, use your router's capability for ddns, easier =) ) uninstall it.

If you want to learn, here's a good tutorial about the concepts of networking and how to set up all dns related stuf

http://www.aboutdebian.com/dns.htm


and... if you're really interested in networking and what you could do with it, here's a very good and concise document

http://www.aboutdebian.com/network.htm

Here you'll find a lot of diagrams of how it all works, you'll understand the ip numbers and most of all you'll learn to secure your sever from any attacks (veeeeeery important). Remember that Ubuntu is very close to Debian, so you could manage with this tutorial, but is not a "do step-by-step document", it's about understanding how it all works, so if one day you want to expand your server to have a mail server, ftp, dns server, and even use your linux box as firewall.. here's the brains about it.

>>> IMPORTANT: this tutorial is a bit old, some of the software in these pages is deprecated, search for your distro's tutorials later.

Cheers,

I merged your two threads together.

I finally got it working so thanks to everyone who helped. I ended up uninstalling the whole lamp package and reinstalling it and followed your tips.