to test whether it's my own ipchains blocking it, can I just do this over ssh:
service ipchains stop [try accessing] service ipchains start
as the machine is remote to me, and, I'd rather not upset it, is issueing 'service ipchains stop / service ipchains start' OK to do over shh, or, can I screw something up ?
The at(1) program is your best friend when doing remote firewall admin. It's a command scheduler - kind of like a cron job that only gets executed once. Check out the man page, yo. :-)
To make sure you don't get locked out of your firewall completely, you could do something like:
# at now + 5 minutes at> service ipchains start at> ^D (ctrl+d)
Then stop the firewall and do the testing you need to. In the worst case (you lose ssh access), you only have to twiddly your thumbs for a few minutes until at kicks in and restarts the firewall for you.
Always remember to use atrm to remove your pending at job when you've finished testing.
-- Pete -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
