Hi,

Some of that FAQ entry was inspired by URL:http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=6841&group_id=1. Right. Draft and brain dump mode on:

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Q: How can I connect to common-lisp.net through a restrictive firewall via ssh?

A: Some firewall administrators are paranoid enough to disallow outgoing connections to the ssh port, but they often allow connections to e.g. the https port. For these cases, we have SSH running on non-standard ports on shell.common-lisp.net. The https port is the most common one that is left open, but sometimes others are open, too. So ssh on shell.common-lisp.net accepts connections to ports 21 (ftp), 22 (ssh), 23 (telnet), 80 (www) and 443 (https).

To find out which ports your firewall lets through, Try to connect to the ports in order:

telnet shell.common-lisp.net 21 telnet shell.common-lisp.net 22 telnet shell.common-lisp.net 23 telnet shell.common-lisp.net 80 telnet shell.common-lisp.net 443

If a port is blocked by the firewall, you'll see something like this:

$ telnet shell.common-lisp.net 443 Trying 86.59.21.101... telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

The error message may differ, depending on the firewall's configuration.

If you can connect to a port, you'll see something similar to this:

$ telnet shell.common-lisp.net 443 Trying 86.59.21.101... Connected to shell.common-lisp.net. Escape character is '^]'. SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_3.8.1p1 Debian-8.sarge.4

If you found a port number that works for you, put the following segment in the ~/.ssh/config file and substitute the port that you found:

Host common-lisp.net Port 443 # substitute the port number you found for 443. HostName shell.common-lisp.net

If none of the ports on shell.common-lisp.net work for you, but you can connect to https web sites, you may be running behind a transparent https proxy. In that case, software like corkscrew (http://www.agroman.net/corkscrew/) may help you connect to common-lisp.net.

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Now, to get Joerg Hoehle an account (:

Cheers,