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Newbie Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 3

Hey there!

I've been using zMud for years now, but recently I moved to a different country to attend college. The college has me sitting behind a proxy, but I have a username and password for it. I've used the proxy to connect to programs like Skype, AIM, and so forth, but for the life of me, I just can't get it to work at all for zMud or any other client whatsoever.

It's a HTTPS proxy, and while that isn't an option for a proxy with zMud I assumed it was the same as a Telnet proxy. I attempted to use the proxy in this way and I ended up with this error message in the Mud Output window.

Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 8:17 am

Web proxy shouldn't make any difference to your telnet sessions, which don't use http (or, by extension, https). Your problem is more likely that your college's software allows no connections on ports lower than 1024 (except 80, obviously). Your MUD hopefully has an alternate port that's higher than 1024 for people in your position - if it doesn't, ask them to set one up.

If that doesn't work, the only other thing I can suggest is using SSH and tunnelling your telnet traffic out over HTTPS.

Newbie Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 3

Hmm, you mean the port I use to connect to my MUD? I'm not really fantastic with networking or connections so forgive me if I misunderstand. The port I usually connect to (and indeed the only port) is 4080.

Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:34 pm

In that case I'd check with your administrators to see if they're blocking all telnet traffic. If they're not, they can probably help you with getting a connection; if they are, you'll need to use the SSH method I described above, which is hopefully something else they can help you with.

Newbie Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 3

Okay, I decided to test PuTTY to see if it would work and it did -- needless to say it's very inconvenient to have to connect to my MUD in this way, but it goes to show I can connect. Is this something only PuTTY can do or can I configure zMud to connect like this too?

Wizard Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 1265 Location: USA

You cannot configure Zmud to connect without PuTTY. I THINK there is a way to use ZMUD and PuTTY together to do this.
A search of the forums might help there.

On the other hand CMUDPro has SSH built into it and I know you can configure it to work.

Sorcerer Joined: 13 Jan 2006 Posts: 715

If you can connect to your MUD using PuTTy you can connect using zMUD without a proxy setup. Go back in and turn off all proxy options in zMUD and connect normally.

What Arminas is referring to is the same thing as what Fang was discussing, SSH tunneling. This would be where you use PuTTy to connect to a SSH account somewhere OUTSIDE of your campus, then tunnel your zMUD session through it. All of which requires extra configuration.

But since you can use PuTTy to connect to your MUD directly, a non-proxied zMUD should work also. Unless you college is blocking it based on program... but that is so difficult to do network wide I've never known anyone who is willing to put that much effort into it.

So yeah, just try zMUD with proxies turned off and let us know.

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

Yeah, you can.

And there's a post about using SSH with Putty/ZMud lying around here somewhere, but I might just as well write it here, too.

Install Putty.

Go to start-command line

Use cd .. until you've found the folder that contains Putty, go to the Putty's folder (the one containing putty.exe)

Then type (while still being under command line) putty -L 4000:mudaddress.com:port# -ssh addressofsshserver.com -l name -pw pword

Putty should open its window as if you logged into your server with it.

Now go to ZMud where you enter the address of your MUD.

Change the address to localhost and port whatever you set it to above (where I wrote "port#" now), for instance, 1234.

If your proxy is a SSH server, the above should ideally work.

NOTE: Once it works, never close the Putty window, otherwise you'd be disconnected from your MUD as well.

EDIT: Bah, ninja'd. Teaches me to read above not last post next time, though. Probably my help is moot for this particular case.

Sorcerer Joined: 13 Jan 2006 Posts: 715

Its ok Prog, while Fang and I mentioned it could be done, at least you've given actual instructions :D

Of course you can configure a PERMANENT tunnel too, so I'll give those instructions here...

I'll be using somemud.net:4000 and ssh.somehost.net for this example.

Open PuTTy
Create a profile by typing ssh.somehost.net into the host name/ip address box and MySSH into the box below where it says saved sessions
Click Save (I do this often, its habit)
In the left hand settings pane, expand SSH
click tunneling for your source port put the port of your MUD, in this case 4000
For destination, put somemud.net:4000
Choose the remote radio (option) button.
Click add
In the left hand pane, choose Session
Click Save again

Now click connect.
In zMUD simply edit your character to connect to localhost in place of the normal IP or hostname.
This will make it connect to your PuTTy terminal on the proper port and be forwarded.
Now wasn't that simple? ;)

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

Very nice. I had no idea how to do permanent tunneling like that but in case I'd need it in the future, I can keep this post in mind now.

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 5:50 pm

http://forums.zuggsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=98989#98989

The post above is one I made a while ago with pictures which may be easier for some people to follow.

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

Heh, that's the same thread I got my information from.

Newbie Joined: 07 Dec 2008 Posts: 3

Sorry if I am jumping in a bit late but I have tried every different configuration listed on this thread and on Taz's thread with the images and I am having horrible luck connecting.

I am using zmud 7.21 and Putty 0.60 and connect to a remote ssh account on port 22. I have tried to use materiamagica.com to test my connection since it uses port 4000 and so did several of the examples. I have followed the three examples above but the closest I have been is getting the zmud to display a connect message but nothing else, any attempt to send info from my end causes a disconnect.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Magician Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 430

Does Putty properly make the connection to your SSH account?

Did you set needed data under ZMud, like localhost #port, instead of materiamagica.com #port?

The point is that for this to work you have to change the data I suggested above.

Once it's done, you go under Putty folder via CMD and CD command and, once under folder, type in

putty -L 4000:mudaddress.com:port# -ssh addressofsshserver.com -l name -pw pword

I can't recall now but as far as I remember, then the first port# is the one you can change to whatever you see fit,
second is the *actual* MUD one. Or was it vice versa, you get the point.

All this should work. If it doesn't, it's safe to assume that your SSH account doesn't let interventions such like this happen.
It also helps to log into your SSH account and manually try to connect to your MUD via telnet command while in shell.

Perhaps they just neglect outgoing telnet traffic or something.

Newbie Joined: 07 Dec 2008 Posts: 3

Thanks for the response Progonoi!

Putty can make the connection to the ssh account and I can even use telnet or tf to connect to the mud from the account.

When I use the cmd line like you suggested (I tried all three combos of port numbers with mud port on both, the first and then with the second) and the best I ever got was having zmud say "Connected to host localhost" and then the disconnect window comes up.

I guess the ssh account has it set up so that I cannot tunnel through them.

Sorcerer Joined: 13 Jan 2006 Posts: 715

I've never heard of an ssh server that blocked tunneling. It is one of the key features of ssh after all. I'm sure it CAN be done (I'd have to look into the config files, which I really don't plan on doing), but I'd email the system admin and ask.