Re: firewall problems killing tomcat and apache

["Mumia W.." <paduille.4061.mumia.w+nospam@earthlink.net>]

On 03/14/2008 07:22 AM, Adam Hardy wrote:
> I'm setting up a server which is a DNS server and broadband gateway for 
> a small LAN, having two NICs with one connected to the DSL modem.
>
> It's got dnsmasq and iptables. I'm saying that because I think it's the 
> firewall causing the problem, but I don't know for sure or why.
>
> I am trying to run apache and tomcat servers to serve content and apps 
> for the internal LAN, and not externally.
>
> Apache runs fine, but tomcat is very slow to load (3 mins) when it 
> should be 1 or 2 seconds. It is also not possible to shut tomcat down - 
> it makes the 'tomcat5.5 stop' command hang.
>
> I know tomcat needs ports 8009, 8080 and 8443 by default, and I studied 
> my iptables script (build by fwbuilder) but it looks fine.
>
> Hopefully this is a common problem, but I've included my iptables output 
> below just in case.
>
> Thanks for any advice,
> Adam
> [...]

I'm not a firewalling expert, but I've always found it quite helpful to 
allow connections from the localhost to go through the firewall, e.g.:

/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT

Some programs require access to DNS or other local services, and tomcat 
may be one of them. I remember Netscape used to do IPC through TCP/IP 
connections to localhost.