In relation to this question on an openid issue I'm having, someone asked me to check whether my server is able to make outbound requests on port 80 and 443.
Can you tell me how to verify that? The server is:
Apache/2.0.63 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.63 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 PHP/5.2.8
More info via php_info() here.
Verify it by trying to fetch a webpage on some other server (e.g., Google) using php's curl functions. Port 80 is HTTP, port 443 is HTTPS.
If you have shell access on the box, you can simply try one of:
1) "wget http://www.google.com" (should create a file named index.html containing the source of the google main page)
2) "telnet google.com 80", which should produce some output indicating you're connected to google.com. Try typing "GET /" followed by return. You should see the google home page code fly by.
If you don't have shell access, do what derobert suggested, use php's built-in curl functions and try to make a connection.