UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

** forum admins: Before you come down on my like a wrath of something, I can get no decent answers so I have to come to these Gurus' court ***
I am by no means Unix expert. However, none of our unix admin (aix & hpux) can give me an answer that makes sense.
My Issue:
Assigned ports in 8601, 8603, 8605 for an application (added that value for it to listen/use), requested our Admins to register the service (list in /etc/services?). Well, when I spawn my application -> ZILCH! Nada!
I do netstat -an|grep 8601 only prompt is returned no LISTEN etc.
I telnet to the port it say "refusing connection..."
I ask my Ux admins, same big plain "no answer".
So for a dummy like me what do I need to do to "open" "enable" "activate" "work" the stupid ports???? Plain English if you will and if you tell me to run some nmap or stuff, might as well delete your reply with my thanks!
Thanks in advance,
RS
Expert: Those who make unusually simple things, complex!

/etc/services maps both ports and protocols
What protocol(s) are set up?

Usually, it should be necessary to register a port in /etc/services, except maybe to ensure that everyone knows which are already assigned to an application, but for the OS there should be little difference.

Do you perhaps have control of a test machine, that has no firewall or similar enabled, in order to check whether or not your program runs correctly.

Thank you pludi & jim_mcnamara for your time.

Yes sir the protocol is tcp. (8583/tcp 8586/tcp etc)

I have asked our admins to register in /etc/services and they have not done so yet. Someone said it is not necessary to have it registered to use it.

I was leaning towards perhaps firewall blocking but what do I know, eh!

I can ask if they (admins) can "open" the port, perhaps ensure there is no firewall blocking going on... looks like that is all I could do.

Anything you could suggest to check is appreciated.

Thx

Forgot to add that I am able to PING t he said ports with no packet loss.

I agree with this. I have never found it to be the case that a port, a nice name and the protocol must be in /etc/services for a process to bind to a port.

A process can bind to a port, if it has permissions, without opening /etc/services.

... at least this has always been my experience.

Having said that, it certainly does not hurt to add your requirements to /etc/services, but I don't think that will solve your problem; hence I agree with the "someone" in the quote above.

In that case, you should be able to do a netstat -an and see these ports in the listing.

Please post the output of netstat -an and cut-and-paste your ports, which must be visible in netstat -an if you can ping them.