ServerAdmins.NET

Guys and Gals,

Awhile back, I had a list of URLs that were handy to me, as an admin. Mailchecker sites that’d hit up SPF/MX/RBL/header checks, DNS verification sites and gimmicky little things like “what is my ip” that’d get used fairly frequently. The sad thing is that the vast majority of my old go-to sites are now gimped in favor of “please pay us”, inundated with ads, or simply gone to hell in a handbasket. What’s an admin to do?

Code. That’s what an admin is to do. So I present to you, the very first alpha release of MXReport.com, my site that’ll hopefully contain all of those gimpy little scripts that have been so handy in the past.

The goal of MXReport.com are as follows.

Fast. It has to be fast.
Curl/wget/LWPable (or your web autobot dejour).
Efficient. No bumbling through 234234 menus to find the one little script you want.
Fast.
Free (no ads either).
Open. (github links will be dropped once I get things a bit more under control)
oh yeah and did I mention, Fast?

With that in mind, please feel free to kick around http://mxreport.com. Is it proper and fully ready? Nah. Does it do all the fancy stuff? Nope. Does it do RBL Checks quickly? Yep! Sure, there’s bugs, which are fairly easy to trip over once you start playing with input, but those should be resolved fairly soon. In the meantime, kick it around and let me know what you think. If you’ve got ideas, please feel free to send them on over.

This isn’t something for me. This is something for Us.

A little post here, more for reference than anything… Here’s a list of the common ports used by cPanel for your firewall building pleasure…

TCP
21 FTP
22 SSH
25 SMTP
26 SMTP (Alternative port, configurable via WHM)
80 HTTP
110 POP3
143 IMAP
443 HTTPS
465 SMTPS
993 IMAP4
995 POP3
2082 cPanel (NON Encrypted)
2083 cPanel (HTTPS)
2086 WHM (NON Encrypted)
2087 WHM (Encrypted)
2095 Webmail (NON Encrypted)
2096 Webmail (Encrypted)
3306 MySQL (Only if allowing Remote Connections)

–UDP
53 DNS

It should be noted that if you’re firewalling off your server, you should open up a portrange for the FTP PassivePort Rolloff. Typically these are higher up ports and a wide range, such as 30000-50000. You’ll also need to modify your FTPd configuration to use this portrange as well. If you don’t, you’ll see issues with FTP connections dropping, successful logins, but a hang, pause or delay when dong an ls or beginning a transfer that results in a dropped connection. Typically this will affect ftp clients that are behind a firewall/router doing NAT translations.

Anyway, that’s it, quick and simple. Enjoy