I am using IPtables as my firewall. I have done no customizing to it-- basically I used Jamd Linux (RH9)'s standard settings for high security and without any kind of server support.

However, I've found that now that I want to run a P2P filesharing program (mldonkey and xmule) I am unable to do anything with them. I believe that this is because the ports they are trying to access are closed.

Is there a simple way to tell my distro to open up the necessary ports when i start the program, and then close them again when i am done?

Thanks,
dave

You do not tell your distro anything.

You tell the operating system.

So the simple way to do it, is to create a shell script which contains

#! /bin/sh
1) run rules to open the ports
2) run Xmule or mlnet+gui
3) run rules to close the ports
4) exit 0

chmod 700 name_of_shell_script

and away you go.