c# access postgreSql as if localhost - c#

PostgreSQL, by default, does not allow remote connections. I know I could change the configuration to allow remote connections, but the software vendor will not support making any changes to the configuration. Since we develop add-on products for this vendor, we cannot simply ignore their wishes.
I would like to access Postgres from a remote computer. But making connections must come from what appears to Postgres as localhost. I'm not at all familiar with what I believe is called a TCP Port Forwarder, or maybe it is called a proxy? or Relay? In any case, I need to make remote connections to Postgres as if the requests were coming from localhost.
I already have a Windows service running on the same server as Postgres, so I would like to add this port forwarder, proxy, rely on this service. We need to do this in c#.
Alternatively, if there is already a tool available for this purpose, that I can run as a service, that would be fine as well.

It is correct that by default Postgres doesn't allow remote connections. But this can easy be changed in the pg_hba.conf file.
For this you just need to add a line with the address of your remote host.
For example:
host postgres all 192.168.12.10/32 md5
Columns:
Type: in your case Host
User: I used postgres in this example, but I recommend you
using a dedicated user as postgres is a superuser.
Database: Which database you want to access via this user and host, I left it to all, but again it is advisable to be more specific
Address: The address of the remote host
The authentication method. (md5 for md5 encrypted password). You can also set trust if you don't want any authentication at all.
For more options I refer to the postgresql documentation: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/auth-pg-hba-conf.html

You say you have a windows service running on the same computer and I take it that you have the code of that service under your control. In theory you can add some code in the service and get the updated binaries installed on that computer. This code can do the proxying between incoming tcp connection from internet and local postgres. From postgres point of view it will look like a localhost connection.
But,
There are some very valid reasons why only local calls are allowed and calls over network are blocked.
Your service may or may not be running with sufficient privileges to listen on a publicly open port.
If any antivirus is running on the machine, it will most certainly flag your app as suspicious and frankly, it is.
Best way to approach this is to ask the vendor nicely to grant access - or to work within the limitations.
It smells of some legal or ethical wrongdoing, but i may be wrong.
Having said that, here are the basic steps:
The service onStart registers a TcpListener on ip 0.0.0.0 and some port known to you.
On a seperate thread in a while(true) loop attempt to GetStream()
Start a TcpClient on ip localhost and postgres port
On a seperate thread in a while(true) loop attempt to GetStream()
In a while(true) loop read from listener's stream and write to client's stream. You may want to use a buffer or an array.
loop until you read a -1
This algo should work in principle.
I hope you are not hacking someone. Please dont.

You need to create a user and allow remote connection to this or an existing user.
you should be able to connecte remotly.
good luck.

Related

C# web app not connecting to on premise SQL Server through Azure hybrid Connection

Steps that I've taken so far
I've disabled the firewall and configured the SQL Server to allow remote connections
Verified if the hybrid connection manager has the connection established
Modified the connection string to specify the TCP ports
Please let me know if you have any further suggestions.
Thanks for the replies, I've finally figured it out.The mistake i was making was that i was specifying the SQL Server Name AND port number(433 in my case) ONLY while deplying to azure and in my code behind the connection string only had the server name mentioned.
However when I updated the connection string in my code behind to include the TCP port, i was able to successfully run the app in conjunction with the Hybrid connection to query results from the SQL Server.
Recently I also worked on Azure hybrid connection and have made a list of all the possible problems that I faced. One of the following may be the cause:
Hybrid Connection may only work with Default Instance of SQL Server and may fail in case of using a Named Instance. Even if the named instance is configured to use static TCP port yet might not work with the Hybrid Connection.
The possible reason might be either your named instance might be listening on the same TCP port as your default instance. As hybrid connection uses port for communication so in case when multiple instances are listening on the same port then hybrid connection might communicate to any of the one regardless of what instance you have supplied in your named instance.
In order for hybrid connection to work you need to enable TLS 1.0 on your on premises machine for both server and client. You need to add following registery value (if not already added):
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.0]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.0\Client]
"DisabledByDefault"=dword:00000000
"Enabled"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.0\Server]
"DisabledByDefault"=dword:00000000
"Enabled"=dword:00000001
The hybrid connection will only work if the connection string uses SQL Authentication i.e., specifying the username and password in the connection string. Thus you can not use Windows Authentication.
Although you do not need to open any firewall ports for inbound connectivity yet you are required to allow outbound connections to the following list of ports:
9350 – 9354,
5671,
80,
443
Azure hybrid connection requires Windows 8/Windows Server 2012 or later to work with. The reason for this is that hybrid connection uses Web sockets that are not supported in the earlier windows version than these. Although you can use the classic hybrid connection (now depricated) to work with the earlier Windows.
It is preferred to use the Fully-Qualified machine names for the endpoint and not the IP address. In cases where the IP of your machine is unlikely to chnage there it might have no effect but in cases where the IP might change, you shuold use the machine name and let the HCM handle everything else for you.
Also a very comprehensive walkthrough of creating a hybrid connection can be find here
Hope this solves your problem.

Initiating tcp connection from public IP to private machine on another network

I'm having difficulty finding help resources on this. I know how to use the TCPClient class to create a connection between one IP/Port/machine and another.
My doubt is how does that work when one machine wants to initiate a TCP connection to another machine where the destination machine is inside a different network. So the destination network may have hundreds of computers each with its own private ip and the network would have one public IP address. This would be using the TCPClient class or any other that is more appropriate.
I know we could use ports and then inside the network the port could be forwarded to the correct machine but I was looking for a solution like the one services like LogMeIn use. Basically I wanted to use port 80 always and then initiate the connection from the server to that particular machine or others on the same network when I needed.
I suppose, theoretically, I could create the connection first from inside that network, then on the server, save the details and close the connection and then in the near future, when I needed, I would re-open the connection.
So in my scenario, I would have many clients across multiple networks, each network might have multiple internal machines with a client installed. Then on the server I would initiate connection to these machines when needed. Within each network I would want to use port 80 for obvious reasons. The reason I want to initiate the connection from the server and not the client machines is simply to save resources, I couldn't cope with having opened connections until eventually I might need to communicate wit them.
Also, I have no control on the client networks besides them having my client installed.
Ideally, I wish to have c# info, possibly code and not network configuration.
I had this requirement at a previous company. We installed our client/server software (C# based) on numerous different networks with a mix of public/private IPs. I found two relatively simple ways to solve it. First, I want to say that without a public IP, its impossible to connect reliably (in my experience).
When I proposed the solution, I explained the problem to other developers/managers this way.
Your server, the machine with the public IP address [public to clients, but may still be an "internal address"], is like a house without any long distance calling. It can receive calls, but it can't make any calls. The clients are like houses with long distance service. Clients must call the server, because they have long distance. Once connected, any party can talk on the line.
From here you have two choices.
Client connects and never disconnects (this is what I implemented). On the server, I had an object that mapped the client object to the client connection so I could communicate any time with a client that was connected.
Server holds a queue of messages for the client. The client automatically connects on a fixed interval to see if there are any messages (maybe 5 minutes). There would be an option from the server to stay connected for a specific interval. Another vendor called this "fast talk".
There's a couple of approaches.
You could setup NAT - probably no good for your scenario.
You could make an outbound connection from your client.
You could "combine the above" by using STUN (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN) this is quite popular in VOIP for peer to peer scenarios.
The Windows Azure servicebus may have a solution for your problem; NetTcpRelayBinding in hybrid mode allows two comuters behind NAT to create a direct connection with each other. This might not solve your problem if you are money constrained as each connection has an associated cost.The simplest solution is probably to have the clients polling your server.
You may use SignalR, which has been developed for this kind of scenarios.
You must have a third party, though (a server which broadcasts messages from sender to other peers).
But the beauty of this technology is that it chooses the most appropriate way to push data to clients: Polling, long connections, sockets... etc.
This provides an abstraction layer which is quite comfortable.
It has been designed to interact with javascript clients, but may be used in full-C# clients as well.
You need a third server that acts as proxy between your machine and target machine that is behind a firewall.
That is how applications like LogMeIn work.
You can do this using SSH tunnels.
Please check https://serverfault.com/questions/285616/how-to-allow-remote-connections-from-non-localhost-clients-with-ssh-remote-port
The topic is about NAT traversal.
STUN is good choice to try to communicate with client behind NAT.
But if STUN don't work,you can use RELAY service to help to pass the message between your server and remote client.RELAY service is a public service that everyone can reach it.

MySQL - Cannot resolve port?

Greetings Stackoverflow.
I am currently using 000webhost.com as my MySQL database / server provider. Using PHP, their service is working brilliant!
I have made a bunch of variables containing the MySQL username, password, host, DB, et cetra.
Looking as follows:
$mysql_host = "mysql3.000webhost.com";
$mysql_database = "a1966938_AtMarke";
$mysql_user = "a1966938_admin";
$mysql_password = "**********";
$mysql_table = "MarketDatas";
and I am using the "mysql_connect($mysql_host, $mysql_user, $mysql_password);" to connect to the server. Again, all of this is working perfect. However, when I am trying to connect to the database via. Client (C#) it will not let me connect, or if I declare the same variables and tries to connect to the server from another IP with PHP using the same variables and procedures, it will not let me connect?
I am confused - What should I do, so it allows all IPs?
The reasons why it does not allow connection from other IPs may be two:
the GRANT PRIVILEGES ... TO user#IP has been given to that IP but no other; if you have GRANT privileges on the database you might be able to remedy that (remember to FLUSH PRIVILEGES).
the firewall on MySQL hosting may allow connections only from their own Web hosting servers. It is unlikely you can do anything if this is the case, but try asking their support personnel.
Usually, you can implement a thin REST layer written in PHP (just google 'MySQL REST PHP interface' or such) so that you can connect to the Web hosting, and pass through queries from their interfaces (which are of course open - otherwise the Web hosting wouldn't work). This is what the HeidiSQL did on some setups, and their code might be floating somewhere. Then you won't be using the C# MySQL library but rather the HTTP library to do the work. More hassle, but more portable (also because not everywhere you can expect the port 3306/tcp to be outbound open: it is on home ADSLs, but many distributed carriers and companies will only allow outbound ports 80, 443, 110, 25 to some IPs, and a dozen others - and 3306 isn't among them; but this depends on what you're planning to do with the C# client).
However, if you get "cannot resolve port", this might also be caused by the client library and you might have to specify the MySQL connection port value manually; the default value is 3306, and (usually) you can specify it in the host name, such as "myserver.host.com:3306".
For security, hosting companies usually lock down MySQL servers to only respond to the IP addresses of the web hosts on their networks.
So, the short answer I'm afraid is that you probably can't set it to allow all IPs.

how can i send data over internet to any specific computer in subnet

I want to know how I can send or recieve data over internet to/from a computer in subnet
(this is specially in context to PPP users bcoz getting static IP is not so much in practice).
I actually want to create an application which can transfer file between 2 specific computer in WAN.
so what are things I need to know about to do the same..(ex. PRESENT IP or MAC ADDRESS etc..)
PROGRAMATICAL EXPLANATION ALTHOUGH PREFFERED,BUT IS NOT NECCESARY...
FTP?
There is a vast torrent of useful results in google, I seriously suggest to google before you ask here.
For instance, have a look at the top result: http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/C-Sharp/Network-Programming-in-C-sharp/
Apart from that, FTP, as suggested by Colin, may be what you're looking for. If you're new to using FTP in C# have a look at http://www.google.com/search?q=c%23+ftp
Put the information on a public IP server, so both computers keep polling if there is new data and send / download that data as needed. A single text file can hold necessary flags such as paths and other info you need.
server just need to be a web server, which means IIS or similar should be installed.
I'm thinking part of your question has to do with one of the computers not having a static IP address. If the two computers, A & B, don't know each others IP address, then an alternative is to use a server. Either A can store the information on the server to be picked up by B, or A can register his current IP address on the server for B to lookup and then connect to A, assuming firewalls don't interfere. Another scheme is that A and B can simultaneously connect to the server, and the server can relay data between the two.
Of course, all of this communication would be done using techniques such as those suggested by mafutrct and Colin.
This question sounds to me like the difficulties of NAT Traversal and trying to establish peer-to-peer connectivity over the Internet. I stumbled on this question researching the best way to set up Internet connectivity to a device that is sitting behind a firewall. I am assuming that the device behind the firewall has to initiate the connection, that a Internet server application (on a Public IP address) to at least manage the initiation of the connection is required, and the Internet server application may also have to act as a relay if the difficulties of NAT is not able to be traversed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAT_traversal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer
A good example of this is LogMeIn. Where the application is installed on the computer that needs to be accessible over the Internet, that application communicates with the LogMeIn Internet servers, you can establish a connection to that computer either by initiating through the LogMeIn servers and connecting peer-to-peer over port 80/443 using NAT Traversal (this would be establishing a peer-to-peer connection) or by initiating through the LogMeIn server and the LogMeIn server acting as a relay if peer-to-peer is unable to be established.
Please note; you must have an application (something running) on both ends of the connection on the Internet, there is no other way. Just like FTP that was mentioned earlier (FTP Client, FTP Server)... but in this case it is peer-to-peer (basically you are writing your own Client and Server... or if you have to use a relay... Client--Relay--Server
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LogMeIn
"The service connects the remote desktop and the local computer using SSL over TCP or UDP and utilizing NAT traversal techniques to achieve peer-to-peer connectivity when available."
The part I don't know is can the relay go in both directions; and I am figuring the device behind the firewall must have to constantly manage the open connection to the Internet Server that is the relay. Those are the questions I am wrestling with now.
Also, you may want to check out this post.
C# byte streams through TCP
From that time, till this date I have encounter so many problems with these four kinds of NAT that basically without an external server you cant do anything.
This is because, one computer can never find where the other one is located as suggested in the pic.
Here PC 'A' will never come to know about the port that corresponds to PC 'B' on R2B without an external server.Even more, if somehow u come to know about the ports you are still in a situation that the router wont allow you to access it if the request hasn't been made for your IP.

Blocking Connections By IP

I need to able to block any and all connections to my pc from a specific IP address , i know this is possible with a firewall but i need to do this in c#. Any idea how (need code).
Update :
Its a generic C# app not asp.net , target platform is WinXp till Win7
Need more information... if you're talking socket communication, you can simply close the connection to a client as soon as it connects if the IP address is blocked, or process the Connection Request and evaluate there.
Edit: Simplest way for you would probably just be to interact with Windows Firewall API... here's how:
http://www.shafqatahmed.com/2008/01/controlling-win.html
Your question is unclear but I'll try to answer the best I can, within my understanding.
Do you want to control machines from connecting to any port on your machine? if so, you need to control the built-in windows firewall or find yourself a filter driver you can control. In order to write your own filter driver, you must leave the land of managed code, so I am guessing that's not an option.
To learn how to control the firewall, here's a link:
http://www.shafqatahmed.com/2008/01/controlling-win.html
more on google.
Do you want to control remote machines from connection to a port on your machines that your application owns? You cannot do that either (see #1 above). However you can take action after the connection, and close the connection if you don't like the remote IP (check the remote endpoint's IP).
two caveats with this approach:
It doesn't save you from a DoS attack.
You will need to be careful if you need ipv6 support (you can't just check the IPV4 address in that case)
HTH
A "firewall" in c#?
First you would have to access the network interface on a low level, eg.: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms817945.aspx
Then you have to parse all incoming packets and maybe discard them.
It's not an easy task and I don't recommend you to write a driver and a firewall in C#, because the .NET Framework will be loaded every time you start your machine.
Also traffic parsing can be tricky... I implemented a router/traffic analyzer in C# some time ago and it took me about one year to gain the experience with network programming to gain the knowledge to do this.

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