VirtualBox guest responds to ping but all ports closed in nmap

Question

I want to setup a test database on a vm for development purposes but I cannot connect to the server via the network.

I've got Ubuntu 12.04vm installed on 12.04 host in Virtualbox 4.2.4 set to - Bridged network mode - Promiscuous Allow All

When I try to ping the virtual guest from any network client I get the expected result.

PING 192.168.1.209 (192.168.1.209) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.209: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.427 ms
...

Internet access inside the vm is normal

But when I nmap it I get nothin!

jeremy@bangkok:~$ nmap -sV -p 1-65535 192.168.1.209
Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2012-11-15 18:39 CST
Nmap scan report for jeremy (192.168.1.209)
Host is up (0.0032s latency).
All 65535 scanned ports on jeremy (192.168.1.209) are closed
Service detection performed. Please report any incorrect results at http://nmap.org/submit/
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.88 seconds

ufw and iptables on VM...

jeremy@jeremy:~$ sudo service ufw stop
[sudo] password for jeremy: 
ufw stop/waiting
jeremy@jeremy:~$ sudo iptables -L
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination       

I have scanned around and have no reason to believe that my router is blocking internal ports.

jeremy@bangkok:~$ nmap -v 192.168.1.2

Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2012-11-15 18:44 CST
Initiating Ping Scan at 18:44
Scanning 192.168.1.2 [2 ports]
Completed Ping Scan at 18:44, 0.00s elapsed (1 total hosts)
Initiating Parallel DNS resolution of 1 host. at 18:44
Completed Parallel DNS resolution of 1 host. at 18:44, 0.03s elapsed
Initiating Connect Scan at 18:44
Scanning 192.168.1.2 [1000 ports]
Discovered open port 445/tcp on 192.168.1.2
Discovered open port 139/tcp on 192.168.1.2
Discovered open port 3306/tcp on 192.168.1.2
Discovered open port 80/tcp on 192.168.1.2
Discovered open port 111/tcp on 192.168.1.2
Discovered open port 53/tcp on 192.168.1.2
Discovered open port 5902/tcp on 192.168.1.2
Discovered open port 8090/tcp on 192.168.1.2
Discovered open port 6881/tcp on 192.168.1.2
Completed Connect Scan at 18:44, 0.02s elapsed (1000 total ports)
Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.2
Host is up (0.0017s latency).
Not shown: 991 closed ports
PORT     STATE SERVICE
53/tcp   open  domain
80/tcp   open  http
111/tcp  open  rpcbind
139/tcp  open  netbios-ssn
445/tcp  open  microsoft-ds
3306/tcp open  mysql
5902/tcp open  vnc-2
6881/tcp open  bittorrent-tracker
8090/tcp open  unknown

Read data files from: /usr/share/nmap
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.08 seconds

Answer... Turns out all of the ports were open to the network. I installed open ssh and confirmed it. Then I edited my db conf to listen to external IP's and all was well.

Answer 1

Ping is an ICMP echo request and does not care about ports. Those are relevant only to TCP and UDP and such which operate on a higher networking layer.

Answer 2

Do you have any ports open on the box, run the fallowing command on the Ubuntu box to see what ports are open:

netstat -nap

If you do have port open then try running nmap with the fallowing switches:

nmap -sS -p 1-65535 192.168.1.209

Answer 3

I got the hint from the link below. It turns out that there were just no processes set to listen to external IP's. I installed open ssh server to make sure there was a listener and then nmap showed 22 open. Then I edited my db's conf file to listen to external IP's and all was well.

Why can't I access my CouchDB instance externally on Ubuntu 9.04 server?