Problems via ngrok?

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edmoncu
OpenVPN User
Posts: 38
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2020 4:30 pm

Problems via ngrok?

Post by edmoncu » Fri Aug 07, 2020 4:31 pm

I did in ngrok but it says "Failed to complete tunnel connection"

The connection to http://xxxxx.ngrok.io was successfully tunneled to your ngrok client, but the client failed to establish a connection to the local address localhost:80.

Make sure that a web service is running on localhost:80 and that it is a valid address.

The error encountered was: dial tcp [::1]:80: connect: connection refused

edmoncu
OpenVPN User
Posts: 38
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2020 4:30 pm

Re: Problems via ngrok?

Post by edmoncu » Tue Aug 11, 2020 2:10 pm

long story short, i setup a vm running openvpnas appliance and tested (internally) that clients were able to connect onto it.
set up the openvpnas clients to accept only TCP (443) connections.
i was able to install ngrok on top of openvpnas. i was able to access it via ngrok's URL. i was able to manage my users and its settings.
i was able to add the server (URL) on my openvpn connnect client. however, i was unable to connect onto it.

please help me as i am running out of ideas here :-(

edmoncu
OpenVPN User
Posts: 38
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2020 4:30 pm

Re: Problems via ngrok?

Post by edmoncu » Wed Aug 12, 2020 8:35 pm

fixed already:
got to solve it and had to work around the big limitation of openvpn as well as ngrok.

in ngrok. i had to tunnel both http and tcp 443

authtoken: myauthtoken
region: ap
log: /var/log/ngrok.log
log_format: logfmt
log_level: debug
tunnels:
http443:
addr: 443
proto: http
bind_tls: true
subdomain: mysubdomain443
tcp443:
addr: 443
proto: tcp

however, due to ngrok's design, it assigns a fixed URL for TCP forwarding (0.tcp.ap.ngrok.io) with a random port that is bound to the tcp port.
unfortunately, openvpn connect ALWAYS forces ONLY adding the source server in HTTPS:// prefix BUT assumes it provides TCP connection.

therefore, what i did is i edit the openvpn profile (*.ovpn) with a text editor and i did this on the following lines
proto (removed)
port (removed)
remote (updated the URL to 0.tcp.ap.ngrok.io randomportnumberassignedbyngrok tcp

import that profile onto openvpn connect

then connect.

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