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Jul 02, 2022

Expose new port in iptables

Last updated at: Mar 23, 2024

A while ago, I was trying to deploy a ngrok liked reverse proxy I implemented during my time in the Recurse Center to my DigitalOcean droplet.

Since my implementation require listening to different ports for different client, I’ll need to expose those ports in my remote server in DigitalOcean. Long story short, it took me a while to figure out that the server is using iptables to block any incoming traffic from other ports.

We can verify this by using the following iptables command:

kai@do:~$ sudo iptables --list
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source     destination
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere   anywhere   tcp dpt:ssh
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere   anywhere   tcp dpt:http
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere   anywhere   tcp dpt:https
ACCEPT     icmp --  anywhere   anywhere
ACCEPT     udp  --  anywhere   anywhere   udp spt:ntp
ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere   anywhere   state RELATED,ESTABLISHED
LOG        all  --  anywhere   anywhere   limit: avg 15/min burst 5 LOG level debug prefix "Dropped by firewall: "
DROP       all  --  anywhere   anywhere

As you can see, some of the ports allowed are for the ssh, http and https protocol. To expose other ports, we need to add a new rule under the INPUT chain:

sudo iptables -I INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 3001 -j ACCEPT

With this change, now I could reach the service I’m running on port 3001 by specifiying the port number by the end of the url:

psychic-guide.example.com:3001

(This is still needed as port 80 is used for http by default.)

If you would like to learn more about iptables, DigitalOcean have some good resources to get started:

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