I'm using SUSE 9.3 and trying in vain to use swat. My server is running http services, and my /etc/services file lists swat as port 901 (but mentions there is a conflict). When I go to myIP:901 I get a 404 Object not found error. I tried changing to port 905, but no luck. As far as I can tell, all the support files are in place, but I'm really not sure about that. What else can I check for? What am I missing?

Welcome to LinuxQuestions.
/etc/services is nothing more then an ASCII text file that allows programs to convert names to port numbers. swat is a seperate server from http and so it does not matter if it (httpd) is running or not. swat typically runs from xinetd which in simple terms is a service that supervises other network services. Instead of services (daemons in linux speak) starting at boot and remaining idle taking up resources they are started when xinetd detects a request. swat must be enabled in the xinetd swat configuration file and of course xinetd must be running. In addition the default is to only allow access from the server itself i.e. no remote login.

http://samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samb...tion/SWAT.html

I had an aha! moment when you said I could only connect from the server. I added my pc's IP to the only_from variable in the xinetd conf file and sent a HUP to xinetd, but to no avail. I also added a disable=no line which wasn't there before. I saw user=root but assumed it would ask me for a login when I connected. Is this the problem, or should I look elsewhere?