IRC bouncer cannot connect to irc server.

E71 · 03-07-2009, 06:08 PM

Hi Guys.

I've been trying to get an IRC bouncer app called muh working on my VPS hosting account but I think the firewall's getting in the way.

I have setup the app on my own personal machine and it works fine but then there's only one simple filters table with very simple INPUT/OUTPUT rules (accept tcp 6667 input, accept tcp 6667 output).

My VPS account's OS is CentOS 5 (kernel 2.6.18-028stab059.5)

I'd like to also note I'm a bit of beginner when it comes to networking, so... please go easy on me!

Here's the output from my VPS:

Code:

root@server [~]# service iptables status
Table: mangle
Chain PREROUTING (policy ACCEPT)
num  target     prot opt source               destination

Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
num  target     prot opt source               destination

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
num  target     prot opt source               destination

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

Chain POSTROUTING (policy ACCEPT)
num  target     prot opt source               destination

Table: filter
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
num  target     prot opt source               destination
1    acctboth   all  --  0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
2    ACCEPT     tcp  --  0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0           tcp dpt:6667

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
num  target     prot opt source               destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
num  target     prot opt source               destination
1    acctboth   all  --  0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
2    ACCEPT     tcp  --  0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0           tcp spt:6667

Chain acctboth (2 references)
num  target     prot opt source               destination

Table: nat
Chain PREROUTING (policy ACCEPT)
num  target     prot opt source               destination

Chain POSTROUTING (policy ACCEPT)
num  target     prot opt source               destination

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

Basically, muh needs to connect to the irc servers on port 6667 or 7000 and listen for connections on port 6667 or some other.

I was kind of overwhelmed by the two new tables ('nat' and 'mangle' -- neither of which I know what to do with).

There's 3 different IPs pointing to the same machine -- I'm not sure if that complicates things or not. I know muh config has an option for specifying listening IP, it's commented out (by default) and when I run muh it says it's listening on the right ip/port.

Its logs however show that it attempts to connect to the irc servers (port 6667/7000) and times out, then terminates.

Code:

root@server [~/.muh]# nmap localhost

Starting Nmap 4.11 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2009-03-07 19:06 EST
Interesting ports on localhost (127.0.0.1):
Not shown: 1665 closed ports
PORT      STATE SERVICE
21/tcp    open  ftp
22/tcp    open  ssh
25/tcp    open  smtp
53/tcp    open  domain
80/tcp    open  http
110/tcp   open  pop3
143/tcp   open  imap
443/tcp   open  https
465/tcp   open  smtps
783/tcp   open  spamassassin
953/tcp   open  rndc
993/tcp   open  imaps
995/tcp   open  pop3s
3306/tcp  open  mysql
10000/tcp open  snet-sensor-mgmt

Nmap finished: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.081 seconds

Tried running as both root and other unprivileged account. No luck.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks for looking!

E71