Connecting to Diffusion over port 80 instead of 8080 is a common request. This guide will work through a resolution to this problem.
Problem
You have a UNIX server and you would like your Diffusion server to be accessible over port 80 instead of 8080. This presents some problems.
- On UNIX any ports lower than 1024 are privileged. Services using these ports must be run as root.
- It is not recommended that Diffusion is run as root – therefore it cannot listen to any of the ports 80 (http) or 443 (https)
- However externally you would like Diffusion accessible over these ports.
Resolution
iptables are used to re-route traffic from port 80 to 8080, and port 443 to 8443 1. The following command will configure the machine to accept incoming connections to port 80.
iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
2. The following will do the same for port 8080.
iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 8080 -j ACCEPT
3. The final command will perform the rerouting.
iptables -A PREROUTING -t nat -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8080
These steps can then be repeated for ports 443 and 8443.
Warning: The iptables command is reserved for the root user. Please double check each command before submitting it as the impact for errors is high.