php script problems. please help

DJDaz · 28 Mar 2010 at 17:37

Hi

I've been playng with a php script that shows if a particular port is open on my home server

One of the ports is to show if my ftp server is online or not. I've got the ftp to listen on a port other than the default 21

Now the php script works like a charm on my home apache set up and shows that the port is open (for this test it's set as 62555)

but if i try it on my external website is shows that the ftp is offline, the port is definately open to the outside world as i tested it with this http://www.g6ftpserver.com/en/ftptest and my mates can access it without any problems

can anyone shed any light as to why it doesn't show as online on the external website? do webhosts normally block scripts from checking random ports like this (tried it with other random ports aswell such as 2121)
i also tried it on another website hosted elsewhere as well as different php scripts and it does the same.

the whole thing works fine on the default port of 21 aswell but don't want to use that port although i have enabled it for the purpose of this thread

Here are the examples to show you what i mean. the first link is to my home server and the second is to my external site hosted with vidahost

http://tempurl.thruhere.net/

http://www.darren-s.co.uk/monitor/

I hope this all makes sense and any help appreciated

dangerstat · 28 Mar 2010 at 17:48

What you're doing is essentially port scanning, and yes web hosting companies will not like you doing that and might have certain counter measures. If it's not breaking your T&C try an nmap on your servers address and see what you get back

DJDaz · 28 Mar 2010 at 17:56

thanks for the reply. how do you do an nmap? not heard of that before

dangerstat · 28 Mar 2010 at 17:58

DJDaz said:
thanks for the reply. how do you do an nmap? not heard of that before

http://nmap.org/download.html

It's as simple as doing

nmap <IP ADDRESS>

It'll return any open ports

Interesting ports on localhost (127.0.0.1):
Not shown: 994 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
80/tcp open http

DJDaz · 28 Mar 2010 at 18:09

ok, thats not detecting that port 62555 is open either, although it does say that the port for telnet is open for some reason :S

dangerstat · 28 Mar 2010 at 18:20

DJDaz said:
ok, thats not detecting that port 62555 is open either, although it does say that the port for telnet is open for some reason :S

I think nmap just uses a reference list of port number <-> likely services so it's no idea what is on port 62555 but it is says you can access it by telnet (which if it is an ftp service you can). Think that's the case

DJDaz · 28 Mar 2010 at 19:55

ok, thanks for the help, looks like i'll have to put this on hold for now then

tntcoder · 28 Mar 2010 at 20:48

DJDaz said:
ok, thanks for the help, looks like i'll have to put this on hold for now then

The port looks open to me:

nmap -sT 90.203.34.40 -p 62555
Nmap scan report for 5acb2228.bb.sky.com (90.203.34.40)
Host is up (0.047s latency).
PORT STATE SERVICE
62555/tcp open unknown

Your ISP shouldn't mind you just testing if a single port is open or not. Could you post your PHP testing script here? It should be perfectly possible to check if it's open or not, and it is. I suppose your web host could have firewalled outbound connections to high destination ports though (stopping your script), and only allow standard connections to a whitelist of common services like port 21 or port 80.

DJDaz · 28 Mar 2010 at 21:07

yeah the port is definately open as i've had mates test it for me and they connected fine,

this is the script i'm using http://www.findmysoft.com/scripts/Server-Status-2-download.html it's not a problem with the script though as it shows the port as open if i run the script on my local web server

i think you're probably right that the web host is blocking it