I Got Sick of Remembering Port Numbers

(gregraiz.com)

40 points | by graiz 2 days ago

17 comments

  • zdw 1 hour ago
    It's like someone should make a file... maybe in /etc ... and put short names for services in it... maybe it could be called /etc/services...
    • tolciho 1 hour ago
      And then they might code up some sort of service lookup tool thingy to use on the train wreck that is the modern web.

        $ getent services gopher
        gopher               70/tcp
      • pratyahava 1 minute ago
        this is a nice idea, but idk why, in macos if i do `nc -l 127.0.0.1 gopher` and then try to open url "http://127.0.0.1:gopher/" - safari does not open it, no requests visible in the `nc` output. also `curl -v http://127.0.0.1:gopher/` gives error message * URL rejected: Port number was not a decimal number between 0 and 65535 * Closing connection curl: (3) URL rejected: Port number was not a decimal number between 0 and 65535

        so the ports are named, it is nice, but in practice it does not make life easier.

      • otabdeveloper4 34 minutes ago
        Heck, maybe even `resolvectl service`?
    • TomK32 50 minutes ago
      Sure, but they are running web-apps they've vibe-coded (hence the .vibe tld) and for that use-case of many web apps that I run in docker containers I use nginx-proxy [0]. All the container needs is a VIRTUAL_HOST environment variable with the domain and what my router needs is an address entry for the wildcard subdomains. I even have nginx-proxy on a internet-accessible staging server.

      [0] https://github.com/nginx-proxy/nginx-proxy

  • lainzhow 3 minutes ago
    I wonder why not use nginx and some local DNS settings to just serve all these local services under a new, local URL.

    Not too long ago I had a similar issue and solved with that.

  • hotfixguru 6 minutes ago
    Vercel’s portless is a great alternative, but unfortunately it doesn’t work well with oauth flows. I’ve built portmap[0] to solve that. Also comes with skills which makes it work really great with coding agents (instructions in the readme).

    [0] https://github.com/JonasKs/portmap

  • arjie 40 minutes ago
    This is a valid concern, certainly. I use kube for most things so it's not a problem, but my homeserver and its apps run on quadlets that I manage. In my case, I just added a README.md in the server account folder that each project's CLAUDE.md or whatever is configured to read. Then it selects a port and sticks that in the document and to be honest I have a few tens of services and it works. Haha, a direct replacement of machine for my own process.
  • pyreal 1 hour ago
    I created something similar to help me spin up complex apps in multiple worktrees with full port orchestration: https://outport.dev/
  • isodude 17 minutes ago
    Why not resolve everything with UNIX sockets instead, that way you can have them named and scoped instead, hiding behind port 443, since it's mosly HTTP anyway.
    • tdeck 11 minutes ago
      Does this work in the browser? How will paths to different resources used by the web app work?
  • magicalhippo 14 minutes ago
    I know it's mixing of layers, but I can't help but feel the IPv6 transition missed the boat when they didn't just get rid of ports in the process. They've changed so much else anyway.

    Want to run another webserver instance or whatever on your computer? Get the OS to allocate a new IP for it. Ports be damned.

    Could be implemented in a backwards compatible way by requiring all IPv6 TCP/UDP traffic to use a fixed port number.

  • CGamesPlay 51 minutes ago
    I've built this twice before. The main problem that I hit is that the AI agents suck at the process lifecycle management: leaving processes alive, starting the same daemon multiple times, etc.

    From a brief glance over the code I like the approaches I see. Using the `/etc/resolver/` mechanism is a new trick to me!

    The interesting part to me isn't the port numbers, it's the automatic service start/stop, including idle route shutdown.

  • tdeck 13 minutes ago
    What is the benefit of using HTTPS for this particular use case?
  • kasperni 1 hour ago
    Not the same, but omeone recently posted this "port" tool here on HN: https://github.com/raskrebs/sonar
  • elchief 47 minutes ago
    I'm slightly annoyed that vite's default port isn't 8483
  • nektro 45 minutes ago
    i have something like this too, currently a 60 line nodejs file
  • system2 34 minutes ago
    It is funny, I just built something like this last week and named it "Network". Additionally it scans for any type of data packages arriving at the SonicWall and sees if they are approved by me or not. I am paranoid after using TP Link at home like a dumbass.
  • hahahacorn 1 hour ago
    Bind to Port 0
  • yunruse 2 days ago
    This project is essentially "give me some metadata & a command which takes env $PORT, and I'll handle the rest". Which is neat!

    I am also sick of handling port numbers - I end up allocating them on a schema to different services, so for testing I can spool any VM/service combination and avoid crossover. But if I want the same service twice, ah...

    It always fascinated me that ports don't have any kind of textual resolver, so you can bind to `:1234` and also say "please also accept `:foobar`". But that would itself require some kind of "port resolver" on a device, and that's another service to break and fix :)

    • winstonwinston 2 days ago
      There is /etc/services to map port numbers to service names, and using getportbyname() to resolve port numbers.
      • axus 1 hour ago
        DNS for /etc/hosts and now vibe.local for /etc/services. What will they think of next!
  • dfordp11 30 minutes ago
    [dead]