Wednesday 29 February 2012

Port Redirection .. what is working

Port Redirection .. what is working and what is not .. Some assembly required.

I am testing out a Ubuntu Server 11.10 installation with Webmin and Virtualmin on my test server. It is not quite as slick as SMEServer, but it does seem to be working AND it has all the latest versions of mysql and php, etc. But .. it is a lot of work - by design. The explanation that has made the most sense to me is the Lego vs Toy comparison.  Say you want to get a birthday present. You have a choice. You can buy a finished toy like a plane or a car and be done with it, or you can get some Lego blocks and build whatever you want in what ever color or size limited only by the number of blocks you have available to you. In that sense, Ubuntu and Linux in particular is like the build-it-yourself Lego. Most other operating systems are more like the store-bought toys. You can have lots of fun with either choice, but the Lego requires more from you to assemble what you want out of the pieces provided .. and therein is all the fun. The pre-built toys are what-you-see-is-what-you-get .. with only limited pre-defined customization possible (and sometimes prohibited) and with the corresponding dollar cost being much greater (compared to the Lego's they are giving away for free).
ok .. so I mentioned that I use the dyndns.com service to point the internet to my ssdirect.com name to my local servers here in sunny southern alberta. It has worked great for many years now. I highly recommend their service.
I also use 1and1.com and have read both praise and rantings from current and former users. I just pay my yearly fee and it seems to work fine. No fuss. No bother. So I am a happy user. However, the port redirection so far is not working from them.
Just as dyndns.com can create 'webhops', my 1and1 host can create what they call subdomains. Compare:
Sidebar: May intentionally not put an index.htm file at root from time to time .. I may later, but for now it just lists the files and folders sitting on my test server. Also, you may wonder how I came to use 8880 as the port to be redirected. Well, my test server is named ww8 (locally), and wordpress complained if the user selected port was less than 1024 so I settled on 8880 to redirect to server port 80. I suppose you could choose about any value you wanted.
Will keep trying, and trying, and ..

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