need help from portforward/linux expert!! !

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I've been trying for ages to create a minecraft server on my linux gateway with a dlink EBR-2310 router, but i can't because linux is a giant firewall and I am a complete, total noob at computers/portforwarding/programming/linux. But I know it's possible to portforward on linux, because i've been on servers that say they're run on linux computers. anybody now how to do it, and explain it in straight english?

I've read through your question several times, but I'm afraid that I still can't make out exactly what you are attempting to accomplish.

Are you trying to take a minecraft server, built on the linux box, and make it public-accessible by port-forwarding through the DLINK?

Or are you using the linux box as some sort of router/firewall and wanting to know how to forward _through_ it somewhere beween a minecraft server and its intended client?

One other question: Has the minecraft server been tested by a client pc elsewhere in your internal/home network to verify the server will talk at all? (Important piece of intel to know before trying to fix problems external to the server.)

Unfortunately, there isn't another computer in the house, so I haven't been able to test from another computer; however, I've been on it from the computer it was running on, if that helps anything. It was working fine.

And I'm trying to make it public-access, the only thing is, nothing would go through, even when I messed around with the portforward/connection settings on the linux box and the Dlink. I had them both set for open port 25565, and it didn't work. I tried a couple other ports, too. like 25579.

The weirdest part is, I went to canyouseeme.org and a couple of other sights to see if the port was open. It wasn't. But then I checked some other ports that should have been open, like port 80, and those weren't open, either. And I crossed checked on other port-checker sites, and apparently, my computer has no open ports whatsoever. And I still get emails.

I looked at all the tutorial videos on how to portforward on a router, before I even touched the linux box internet connection settings, and that didn't work.

I had a friend who has a public server on a mac look at it, and she couldn't figure it out, either.

Sorry I wasn't clear enough with my original question. You can pm me if you want.

I assume the ports are open on both UDP and TCP, right?

If you want to find out whether the router is blocking anything, you can try bypassing it temporarily and seeing if your ports are still blocked.

I did figure out how to portforward on Linux once, it was one command-line command.. I Google'd for 'portforward linux' or something like that. The program is called 'iptable' or.. something

The ports are open on both TCP and UCP. I, sadly, am a noob at networking, so I don't know how to bypass the router, unless you happen to mean turn it off.
I heard about the iptable thing, and I tried to do it, but all the tutorials I found were made for someone who had prior experience. Where do people learn this stuff, anyway? Sure, maybe the internet, but I couldn't find anything.

To bypass the router, plug the connection from the internet straight into your computer's network port. Don't route it through the router at all.

I took a few courses in college about networking.

Basically, every computer on the internet has an IP address (like 23.43.3.37) and then you can make various connections to one computer via different port numbers, so that different network programs can run on the same computer. Computers are sophisticated enough nowadays to 'pass along' data to others on the same network based on certain criteria, like port # (if you explicitly give them rules to do so).

Your router probably uses NAT, so that you can have multiple computers on your local network hooked up to the internet while only using one IP address visible to the outside world. So, if you want to reroute things around your internal network, you will probably end up using 'internal IPs', which are usually something like 192.168.100.1 or 10.0.0.3 - these addresses aren't 'seen' by the outside world (they're shielded by your NAT-equipped router) and so they don't really matter, as long as each computer has a unique address for your internal network.

Under Windows you can use 'ipconfig' to figure out your current IP address, and it's similar under Ubuntu although I forget exactly what it is.. ipconfig might work there too, with certain command-line switch(es)

As far as how I figured out how to set up forwarding in Unix (Ubuntu), I found an example and changed it for my purposes and it worked

Do you mean the ethernet box? I always have that plugged in because there's very little wifi connection in my house... which makes me wonder if I'm actually using the router at all. I don't even know where it is, and I can't check cause right now I'm in a different house.

If that's the case, only the iptaples are left, and I have no idea what to do with those. Again, I'm a noob at networking and programming, and all the sites with info on iptables for linux expected me to know everything.

And thanks for the help, guys. I really appreciate it.

How do you get your internet? Cable, telephone company, something else?

I just found out that we don't actually use a wireless router. I have this weird hardwired ethernet router connection that comes straight from optimum. It's a dlink ebr-2310 box. I can try with a wifi connection, but there's no real good wifi in the house, so the connection would be too weak for a minecraft server. I'll test as soon as I get back to that computer (it's in a different house now, and I won't be back for a week) to see if the ethernet box is ruining it. I looked up the router and apparently it has a built in firewall... so I've got a firewall os and router. Great.

Typically, there's a modem that connects to the phone line or cable line and you plug an Ethernet cable into that, then you plug another cable from the modem into a router, then you plug your computer(s) into the router. However, some companies do give you modems that are basically also routers, with the ability to plug multiple computers into the modem, and firewall functionality, etc.

Depending on which Linux distro you are using it may be easy to open up certain ports on the OS side. Ubuntu probably provides some easy way to do it, for instance.

Yeah, I've got ubuntu. I tried messing around with some Internet connection stuff in the GUI, and it looked like it should've worked because I was adjusting the procedure from a Mac portforward tutorial on YouTube, but it didn't. Probably the router was screwing it up.

Yeah it does sound like the router. You can probably find documentation for it on the net. Most routers have both 'DMZ' settings where you can just simply let everyone that wants to connect to a certain IP do so, and more specific port forwarding settings where you specify that certain ports should always go to a particular IP. I recommend doing the 'port forwarding' approach. Figure out the internal IP for your MC server and add entries for all the MC ports, both UDP and TCP/IP. If that doesn't work you can try the DMZ setting, but that leaves you more open to random attacks and scans from wherever. If the DMZ setting worked though, at least you would know it is something with your router and you could try the port forwarding some more.

Also, routers sometimes have firmware updates released, it's possible that new firmware has fixed some sort of bug that is affecting you (unlikely but possible).