For example http://www.utorrent.com/testport?port=12345
How does this work? Can the server side script attempt to open a socket?
There are many ways of accomplishing this through server-side scripting. As #Oded mentioned, most server-side handlers are capable of initiating socket connections on arbitrary ports, and most of those even have dedicated port-scanning packages/libraries (PHP has one in the PEAR repository, Python's 'socket' module makes this type of tasks a breeze, etc...)
Keep in mind that on shared host platforms, socket connections are typically disabled for security purposes.
Another way that is also very easy to accomplish is to use a command-line port-scanner such as nmap from your server-side script. i.e in PHP, you would do echo ``nmap -p $port $ip\
The server side script will try to open a connection on the specified port to the originating IP.
If there is no response (the attempt will timeout), this would be an indication that the port is not open.
The server can try, as #Oded said. But that doesn't ensure the receiver will respond.
Typically, something like this happens:
The URL request contains instructions about which port to access. The headers that your browser sends include information about where the request is originating from.
Before responding to the request, the server tries to open a port and checks if this is successful. It waits a while before timing out.
The webpage is rendered dynamically based on the results of this test.
The response is returned to you containing the results.
Sometimes steps (2) and (3) will be replaced with an AJAX callback, which allows the response to return sooner.
Related
Breif Description of what I am trying to accomplish. So I am working with Crestrons Simpl+ software. My job is to create a module for a sound masking system called QT Pro. Now, QT Pro has an API where you can control it via HTTP. I need a way to establish a connection with the QT Pro via HTTP( I have everything I need, IP, Username, Password).
Whats the problem? I have just started working with this language. Unfortunately there isn't as much documentation as I would like, otherwise I wouldn't be here. I know I need to create a socket connection via TCP on port 80. I just don't know what I'm supposed to send through it.
Here is an example:
http://username:password#address/cmd.htm?cmd=setOneZoneData&ZN=Value&mD=Value
&mN=Value&auxA=Value&auxB=Value&autoR=Value
If I were to put this into the URL box, and fill it in correctly. then it would change the values that I specify. Am I supposed to send the entire thing? Or just after cmd.htm? Or is there some other way I'm supposed to send data? I'd like to stay away from the TCP/IP Module so I can keep this all within the same module.
Thanks.
You send
GET /cmd.htm?cmd=setOneZoneData&ZN=Value&mD=Value&mN=Value&auxA=Value&auxB=Value&autoR=Value HTTP/1.1
Host: address
Connection: close
(End with a couple of newlines.)
If you need to use HTTP basic authentication, then also include a header like
Authorization: Basic dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQ=
where the gibberish is the base64-encoded version of username:password.
But surely there is some mechanism for opening HTTP connections already there for you? Just blindly throwing out headers like this and hoping the response is what you expect is not robust, to say the least.
To see what is going on with your requests and responses, a great tool is netcat (or telnet, for that matter.)
Do nc address 80 to connect to server address on port 80, then paste your HTTP request:
GET /cmd.htm HTTP/1.1
Host: address
Authorization: Basic dXNlcm5hbWU6cGFzc3dvcmQ=
Connection: close
and see what comes back. SOMETHING should come back. (Remember to terminate with two newlines.)
To see what requests your browser is sending when you do something that works, you can listen like this: nc -l -p 8080.
Then direct your browser to localhost:8080 with the rest of the URL as before, and you'll see the request that was sent. (Then you can type back to see how the browser handles the response.)
I set variables host and port instead of setting the 'address' variable tuple in socket.py. I was unable to get 'address' as a tuple to work. I do not believe this is the issue, but I thought I should state this up front.
FYI, my goal is an integrations project, and I believe I isolated socket.py as the problematic code. socket.py is not creating a listener on the remote server. I run the python script on my client, and my server address is 192.168.1.130 port 7879.
I think socket.py is the problem, because I do not receive the expected print statements back through the console that socket.py is attempting to create a socket. In addition, I can RDC to the server, disable ufw (yes I know this is a bad idea), create a tcp listener, push data through the client socket to the server socket, and verify this with netcat.
Am I mistaken that I should be able to parameterize socket.py with nothing more than a host and port and be able to create a socket connection? I am happy to provide more detail from logs, but I thought I should start with a very high level overview.
Answer: More investigation needed. I think socket.py does not create the remote connection with socket(),bind(),listen() statements; instead simply looks for a listener on the remote server with a connect() statement. This is entirely my misunderstanding given I did not dive into the details of the socket.py code. I figured this out because the service running on the remote server creates the listener, but the service itself on the remote server is what is not properly starting.
If you telnet to the ip address 192.43.244.18 port 13, you'll get the current time.
well, if I'm not wrong, this is simply a server socket. But there's one thing strange: how's this socket always listening?
If I take a PHP page and program sockets in there, I still have to request for the page first in order to activate the server socket, but this one isn't associated with any pages, and even if a make a perl script, I still have to request for that in order to run the server socket!
My question is: how can I make such a thing - an always listening socket - on a webhost (any language will do)?
You can run the process that's listening on the socket as a daemon (Linux) or service (Windows), or just a regular program really (although that's less elegant).
A simple place to begin would be http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/networking/sockets/clientServer.html which teaches you how to make a simple serversocket in Java that listens for a connection on a specific port. The program created will have to be run at all times to be able to accept the connections.
I'm trying to work out how exactly to deploy Node JS on my Ubuntu 10.04 LTS server. I've read many different blogs and articles that explain multiple different ways. Most seem out of date, or don't really work it seems.
It seems that the simplest solution is to use something like Forever? ...or Upstart with Monit or Supervisor. Is that correct?
One thing that I still don't understand though is without using something like Ngnix, how would I actually get my domain name (such as example.com) to actually point to my Node JS application and it's running port?
Many thanks for any guidance. I'm not an expert with this, so please excuse my lack of knowledge here. (I'm trying my best! :)
UPDATE: The reason why I'm asking this is on my server I have Ngnix running for my static/Django projects. I'm wanting to use the same server for some example Node JS applications I'm messing around with. I've followed the link about vhosts and Connect with Node JS, and this is good to a point, but I'm still not understanding how I would get one of my domains to actually point to this Node application on my server?
You need to separate the notion of the domain name from the actual server. The domain name points to a server. When the browser (or other client) asks for example.com, DNS looks up the associated IP address and directs the browser to the server at that IP address.
The browser then chooses which port to send its request through by looking at the URL. For example, a request for example.com:345 will select port 345. If left unspecified, by default, when using HTTP, it uses port 80.
So the browser has sent its request through port 80. Now, on your server, there is a program listening to that port. For you, it would nginx. Nginx reads the request ("oh, you're looking for index.html") and delivers back the contents you requested.
In your scenario, Node.JS replaces Nginx. For Node.JS to respond, it would also need to listen to a port and respond appropriately. That's where your code comes in:
require('http').createServer(function (req, res) {
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
res.end('Hello World\n');
}).listen(1337, "127.0.0.1");
This starts a server, listening at port 1337. Any requests directed to example.com:1337 would be responded to by this Node.JS application with a "Hello World".
tl;dr: Your domain name already points to your server. You can access your application at example.com:1337, where 1337 is your port.
What is the best way to access a running mono application via the command line (Linux/Unix)?
Example: a mono server application is running and I want to send commands to it using the command line in the lightest/fastest way possible, causing the server to send back a response (e.g. to stdout).
I would say make a small, simple controller program that takes in your required command line arguments and uses remoting to send the messages to the running daemon.
This would be similar to the tray icon controller program talking to the background service that is prevalent in most Windows service patterns.
Mono's gsharp tool is a graphical REPL that lets you Attach to Process.
#Rich B: This is definately a suitable solution, which I already had implemented - however on the server I have to use, the remoting approach takes around 350ms for a single request.
I've measured the time on the server side of the request handling - the request is handled in less than 10ms, so it has to be the starting of the client program and the tcp connection, that takes up the time.
Hence the hope that I can find another way to post the requests to the server application.
You can use the system.net.sockets abstractions to create a service on a TCP port, and then telnet to that port.
Check the library status page; Mono's coverage here is a bit patchy.