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I'm using an AT&T router where I have port 443 open. I did a port scan and it does not show 443 open. I have the firewall open with all the default options listed that Allow incoming connections.

I'm using Let's Encrypt on my development MacMini server for my SSL certificates. I'm having a problem with accessing my website. I contacted the Let's Encrypt forum and was told that my problem was that port 443 was blocked.

This is the only option that I found so far that claims to force open a port. This solution is three years old. I'm not familiar with netcat so I'm reluctant to use it without more understanding on how this works?

How to force open TCP 443 on my machine?

I've also read several solutions that use the Server app. I'm not using the Server app because I had problems with it a while ago. Is there another clean option to turn this port on that does not use it? I'll install it if I need to but I prefer another option if one is available.

UPDATE 03/13/2019: I just installed the latest version of macOS Server to try and open port 443. The vast majority of features that were available in older versions of the Server app have been removed so I need to find another option to get this done.

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    The port should already be open unless you have Firewall turned on. You do, however, need something to listen on port 443. This requires having some software running that is listening for it. You shouldn't need to do anything special because it's on macOS
    – Ezekiel
    Commented Mar 12, 2019 at 21:30
  • I thought that was the case but with the Firewall off Network Utility did not show port 443 when I did a port scan. It used to years ago from what I remember. Ports 80 and 88 show up but not 443. This is my output when I execute wget. [myfolder (master)]$ wget mydomain.com --2019-03-12 16:32:45-- mydomain.com Resolving mydomain.com (mydomain.com)... 999.999.999.999 Connecting to mydomain.com (mydomain.com)|999.999.999.999|:443... connected. Unable to establish SSL connection. I may be wrong thinking the port is blocked but it does not show up.
    – Pamela Cook - LightBe Corp
    Commented Mar 12, 2019 at 21:37

1 Answer 1

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"443... connected. Unable to establish SSL connection" means that the problem isn't related to port 443 being blocked; your version of wget is probably stale (see this StackOverflow post.)

Try curl instead: curl https://mydomain.com

(Note: the "https://" part is important!)

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    I just tried the curl command; I got the error: curl: (7) Failed to connect to lightbe.lightbe.com port 443: Connection refused. Port 443 does not show up in Network Utility when I do a Port Scan like it used to. I need to figure out why or come up with a way to open it since the Server App removed that functionality.
    – Pamela Cook - LightBe Corp
    Commented Mar 13, 2019 at 22:01
  • Thanks! That information helps a lot. nmap says ports 443 and 80 are closed, about which the nmap manual says "Closed: ports have no application listening on them, though they could open up at any time." In other words, it sounds likely that the web server isn't running, or isn't listening on those ports. Which web server are you using? Apache? (To reproduce my results, use nmap -v -APn lightbe.lightbe.com For comparison, also enter nmap -v -APn 127.0.0.1 in a terminal on the macmini. If the PORT column doesn't include 443, there's your problem.)
    – Bill Horvath
    Commented Mar 14, 2019 at 2:41
  • Bill, when I try to execute nmap it says nmap: command not found.
    – Pamela Cook - LightBe Corp
    Commented Mar 14, 2019 at 13:01
  • I use Slack, GitHub for Mac and Grammarly. When I execute lsof -Pn -i4 | grep :443 it says Closed for GitHub and Established for the others. I'm using Apache. I will need to figure out how to get Apache to listen to them. I thought I had all of that set up. I'm updating/private//etc/httpd.conf. I include httpd_ssl.conf. I load the module mod_ssl.so. I know there is another config file that the Server app uses. Do I need to update that one instead? If so, I forget where it is. It's been years since I have done this. I don't use the Server app.
    – Pamela Cook - LightBe Corp
    Commented Mar 14, 2019 at 13:07
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    I’m in the Midwest. I found out how to install nmap using homebrew. There is another apache confie file /etc/apache2/extra/http-default.conf I may try and update. If that does not work I may check local groups. This is not a production server. I’m trying to test Ruby on Rails websites before deploying to Heroku. My problem will be finding people hosting websites on Mac computers. Thanks so much! I will post what happens when I update the other config file.
    – Pamela Cook - LightBe Corp
    Commented Mar 15, 2019 at 14:33

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