Jabber port list restriction

[Matthew Cengia <mattcen@…>]

I think that the limits imposed on the ports that can be used for Jabber are unnecessary and can potentially be a hindrance.

I for example connect to a private server at my workplace, which I have to port forward via SSH to my local system. These port restrictions mean that I need to forward to one of the listed ports (5222, 5223, 5220, 5221, 5224, 5225, 5226, 5227, 5228, 5229, 80, 443). As it is the system I use BitlBee on already has services on ports 5222, 80, and 443.

I have commented out the section of code that checks for port validity (jabber.c:202-211), and everything seems to work fine.

Is there any particular reason why this restriction is in place? If nothing else, I think that rather than just an "Illegal port number" error, the accepted ports should be listed so the user know what BitlBee considers to be "legal".

[Wilmer van der Gaast <wilmer@…>]

Yeah, sorry, that list is mostly meant for public servers. People were worried that BitlBee could be used as a port scanner. I think the risk isn't huge but decided to be on the safe side anyway.

What BitlBee needs is the ability to enable/disable this kind of safeguards easily from the configs.

[Matthew Cengia <mattcen@…>]

Thanks for the quick response :-).

That makes sense; I suppose an option in bitlbee.conf to disable that small code chunk would do the trick. Thanks for the explanation. If I get a chance I might dig into the code and see if I can write it in myself :D.

-- Regards, Matthew Cengia

[wilmer]

Oh yes, this is actually a duplicate: #265

I still have to add some way to configure limits/etc on a BitlBee machine. I have some ideas for it now, at least.