Firefox 3.x has introduced something I'm sure they call a 'feature', but is a major annoyance for any sysadmin and developer -- they block access to ports other than 80. I thought IE was the only browser that was brain-dead that way, but Firefox has proved me wrong. Anyway, here's a simple recipe for getting around this:
1) go to about:config in the Firefox address bar
2) right click, choose new->string
3) enter the name network.security.ports.banned.override and the value 1-65535
4) there is no step 4
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9 comments:
Mozilla has had selective port blocking for a long time due to security reasons. It is a good thing, and you shouldn't disable it in your main profile. You should go read the reasons and the specific blocked ports here: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/PortBanning.html
If you are a developer, first consider if you could use some unblocked port. Second best alternative would be to use a developer profile in which you disable port blocking only for the specific ports you need (you can launch multiple firefox processes with -no-remote option).
I've never run into this myself so this was news to me.
It appears they only block a (fairly reasonable) specific set of ports that are used by other protocols: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/PortBanning.html
If it's any consolation "Allow the user to decide if the blocking is really required." is on the list of "Things to do".
Yeah never ran into that either.
I regularly connect to port 8000 on my own server, so it seems to me there really isn't much of a problem.
Sorry, I should have made it more clear that it's *selective* port blocking, not wholesale blocking of any port different from 80. But still, Firefox blocks ports such as 81, 82, etc -- which is a major annoyance in my line of work (we're mapping various Tomcat instances to those ports for example.)
Grig
Thanks for the tip. I use firefox to view Internet cameras on different ports. I unblocked them in v2 but when I upgraded to v3 the ports were blocked again. After issuing the warning firefox should allow the user to continue if they want to.
In Firefox v3.5, network.security.ports.banned.override may not apppear by default in the about:blank list. The key must then be created by right-clicking on any
existing key and creating it.
Thanks for this, useful post.
Heikki, while I'm find for it being enabled for the masses. I prefer to use the safety mechanisms in my brain. Phishing is a far bigger risk than alternate ports. I've never had users be harmed by alternate port usage, but I've had many harmed by phishing.
Commenting on this old post because it ranks very high when searching for information about this "feature."
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