[Techtalk] Shutting off X ports.

[Conor Daly]

On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 06:51:41AM -0700 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
joe shindlin thought:
> 
> Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA34 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
> Interesting ports on localhost (127.0.0.1):
                                  ^^^^^^^^^
Note this is the loopback address: your machine's address for itself.

> (The 1550 ports scanned but not shown below are in
> state: closed)
> Port       State       Service
> 22/tcp     open        ssh
> 37/tcp     open        time
> 111/tcp    open        sunrpc
> 113/tcp    open        auth
> 515/tcp    open        printer
> 6000/tcp   open        X11
> 
> Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned
> in 0 seconds

This seems to say that the listed ports are open to your own machine.
This is fine since X uses network protocols within the machine as well as
externally.  In fact, many *nix programs/services assume the existence of
a network.  The loopback address exists to serve that assumption.
 
Conor
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net>

Domestic Sysadmin :-)
---------------------
Faenor.cod.ie
  7:16pm  up 11 days,  1:49,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Hobbiton.cod.ie
  7:15pm  up 11 days,  1:49,  1 user,  load average: 0.01, 0.08, 0.03