Score:0

ssh, telnet, apache and shellinabox servers blocked

de flag

I've been operating a "BBS-style" system on a Windows 11 computer for the last few years. Access came courtesy of WSL ssh, telnet, shellinabox and (for the web page) apache2. All was well until this week when my laptop died and I had to recreate the system on a new computer.

I've reinstalled / reconfigured everything based on my original system, but for whatever dumb reason things are not working. I can use ssh, telnet, shellinabox and apache to access the host computer in "localhost" mode, but access from outside computers is rejected.

I have the same port-forwarding set up on my router as before and I have set up traffic rules in my Norton 360 firewall to allow outside connections on the associated ports (apache=80, ssh=2233, telnet=2323, shellinabox=4200).

Norton "Security History" shows it allowing traffic on the 4 ports. However, sshd auth.log doesn't show anything. So, it seems like something after Norton, but before WSL is shutting the door. After a week of frustration, I'm pretty much stumped at this point, so any suggested avenues of inquiry would be appreciated.

in flag
Welcome to AskUbuntu. Is the problem on the Windows host or with the WSL container? If it’s the host, then [SuperUser](https://superuser.com/) would be a better place to ask this question
Mark Peterson avatar
de flag
If you want to try it yourself - ssh muinet@muinet.com -p2233
in flag
I try not to connect to random servers on the Internet. It's disrespectful. That said, it *sounds like* the issue is with Windows rather than Ubuntu, which makes the issue off-topic for AskUbuntu. [SuperUser](https://superuser.com/) will be the place to ask this question
Score:0
de flag

I don't know if this is the "correct" solution to whatever was causing my problems, but I tried switching my WSL installation from WSL 2 to WSL 1 and now everything is working fine.

The first thing I noticed is that I got 4 dialog boxes from Windows Defender when I started up the telnet, ssh, web and shellinabox servers for the first time (all of which got "allow" keypresses from me). It's odd because Windows Defender supposedly doesn't do anything when Norton 360 is in play, but clearly it's in there doing something. The odder thing is I never got those dialog boxes when I was trying to do all this stuff with WSL 2.

So anyway, problem solved even if the mystery isn't.

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