Open ports under Fedora Core 8 (for VMWare Server)

Question

I have just installed VMWare Server 2.0 on a fresh Fedora Core 8 install. The ports for the web access console of VMWare are 8222 and 8333 (like the defaults).

When I try a remote http access to myserver:8222 it fails. But when I run

/sbin/service iptables stop

access becomes possibles (although not very satisfactory). Thus, I have updated the conf file as follow

cat /etc/sysconfig/iptables
# Firewall configuration written by system-config-firewall
# Manual customization of this file is not recommended.
*filter
:INPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:RH-Firewall-1-INPUT - [0:0]
-A INPUT -j RH-Firewall-1-INPUT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type any -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p 50 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p 51 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p udp --dport 5353 -d 224.0.0.251 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 631 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 631 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
-A FORWARD -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
# Custom authorization for VMWare administration
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8222 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8333 -j ACCEPT
COMMIT

yet, even after reloading the iptables settings it's still not working. Do anyone knows what I am doing wrong?

Answer 1

Your rules for VMware need to come before the REJECT entry; otherwise they'll never be reached.

A good debugging tool is to add a LOG just before your rules to verify:

-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
# Custom authorization for VMWare administration
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8222 -j LOG --log-prefix="8222 "
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8222 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8333 -j LOG --log-prefix="8333 "
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8333 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
-A FORWARD -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
COMMIT

Unlike other targets, LOG returns to allow further rules to be processed. The ACCEPT and REJECT targets terminate processing.

Answer 2

A simple way to fix this would be to run system-config-securitylevel or system-config-securitylevel-tui and add 8222 and 8333 as trusted ports. This adds essentially the same iptables rules as you're doing manually.