can't tunnel through iptables

[Alex Feldman]

This is probably really an ssh question, but I'll try it here anyway.  I
am running tptables v. 1.3.5 on FC5.

I am running iptables on my server.  It locks down most everything for
INPUT, only opening up a few ports for mail and http.

I have a second script I can run besides my usual one.  The only
difference between the two ar the following two lines in the second
script:

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -i eth0 --dport 143 -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p udp -i eth0 --dport 143 -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT

With those two lines in place, I can use an IMAP mail client
(thunderbird) from my laptop to connect with my server and everything
works great.  Without them, thunderbird just hangs.

I would like to run the IMAP protocol through an ssh tunnel.  So leaving
the orignal script in place, I su'd to root on my laptop and entered the
following command:

ssh -L 143:myserver:143 myserver

and it let me login to the server after performing the RSA
authentication, but I cannot connect my local thunderbird client to the
server - it hangs just as would if had not tried to establish the
tunnel.

I have tried several variations on this, including telling the
thunderbird on my laptop to use a non-well-known port, e.g., 8118, and
then not suing to root on the laptop but just as myself entering the
command

ssh -L 8118:myserver:143 myserver

to try to set up the tunnel without being root, but nothing seems to
work - thunderbird always tries and retries and eventually gives up
trying to establish a connection.

Thanks for any ideas.

-- 
	--alex			alex at math.boisestate.edu

        <a href="http://math.boisestate.edu/~alex/">Alex Feldman</a>