Opening ports on Mandrake 8.2?

I'm trying to run a Counter-Strike server on Mandrake 8.2. The server starts up ok but nobody can connect to it, and I think it might be because the proper port (27015) is closed. Anyone know how I'd open that port?

Put an entry for it in /etc/services. You will then need to configure xinetd to start a server to handle incoming connections. See the xinetd man page for more details.

When I make an entry do I have to name the entry after the file that is being run or is it just an arbitrary name?

It's an arbitrary name, but you must reference that same name when you configure inetd/xinetd to handle connections from that port.

Thanks for your help. I'm kinda new to the whole linux thing so I have a couple more questions; hope you don't mind . Where in the xinetd directory do I reference it (the new service entry)? I'm assuming I have to create a new file/folder in the etc/xinetd.d directory, but what should I name the files? For instance if my services.conf lists "hlds" as my service associated with port 27015, what should my new xinetd service files be named and contain?

Create a new file in xinetd.d called whatever you called the entry in /etc/services.

It will contain instructions as to how to start the server, what user to run it as, etc.. For full instructions see www.xinetd.org as I am unfamiliar with the CS Server. Something like this might work:



Hope this helps.

Ok after reading all documentation/examples I could find on xinetd, I think I configured the new service correctly. However, when I go to run the server, it says that the server port cannot be used because it has already been assigned to something else. When I disabled the new xinetd service I created, the server starts up fine but cannot be logged on to or pinged by external computers. Is the xinetd service I create for CS supposed to automatically start the CS server every time xinetd is started, or does it just open the server port for external access? I think I am attempting to do the latter, and I'm not sure if xinetd is the way to go about doing it.

For example, I have Apache web server running just fine, and I notice that it doesn't need a xinetd service config to do so. Why is the web server port (I think it's 80) open but not the CS server port? If the web server can be made accessable, there must be an analogous way to make the CS server accessible. Anybody else have any suggestions?

xinetd starts a new instance of the server for each connection. As of Apache 2 this is no longer possible, as Apache has its own way of dealing with requests using child processes, and using it via xinetd would be a woefully inefficient way of using it.

I guess you should read to see how others are doing this. Having not done it myself, I don't know the details of the CS server