Open Ports

[Smoot Carl-Mitchell]

On Mon, 2009-02-09 at 14:20 +0000, John wrote:

> However, every time I start Thunderbird, it reports "Could not connect 
> to server localhost; the connection was refused". (When I used to use 
> the identical configuration on a Windoze XP machine, it worked.)

This indicates Thunderbird is trying to connect to itself (e.g.
localhost should be mapped to IP address 127.0.0.1 which is the loopback
interface).  I am puzzled why the WebMail add in is trying to make a
connection to localhost and not to a remote email service.  Sounds like
something is misconfigured in Thunderbird.

> My main question at the moment is how can I determine which ports are 
> open on my laptop (I have not configured a firewall on this machine!)?

If you do not have a firewall, then any port is open, but you need a
service on the port to connect to.  You can run

netstat --tcp --listen

to determine which services you have running on your laptop.
-- 
Smoot Carl-Mitchell
Computer Systems and
Network Consultant
smoot at tic.com
+1 480 922 7313
cell: +1 602 421 9005