port tests = 404 error

[Angel Marcloid]

hello!

moved to a new place and was happy to see that as soon as i tested soulseek, ports were open and i could download things.

then one day the port tests turned into 404s. i could still download however.

i posted in here and by the time i checked replies, they were working again!

and now they are 404 errors again and have been for almost a week now.

any ideas?

[scatt...@gmail.com]

I just tried it and it was working fine, apart from that I have no ideas.

[Angel Marcloid]

am still getting 404s. I wonder if it's my ISP acting like it doesn't work because it's Soulseek. Every browser I try on any Soulseek related website I get all these warnings. I tried the port tests in Safari and I am getting 404s there too. Same with Opera. Avast won't even let me open it.

[Mat]

This may be happening because the tools.slsknet.org subdomain has no SSL certificate, and your browser is trying to redirect to a HTTPS variant of the page anyway.

Nir, any chance a SSL certificate could be added to the tools.slsknet.org subdomain, or the port checker could be moved to the main slsknet.org domain?

[Angel Marcloid]

I do have a browser extension that tries to add the 's' every time I click on anything or type a URL. However I can turn that off, and have tried the port tests with it off.

[Nir Arbel]

Good idea. I made the script available through www.slsknet.org, future builds of SoulseekQt will use it automatically. In the meantime you can manually replace tools. with www.

[Angel Marcloid]

Awesome, Nir. Now the port tests load, but my ports are closed when they were open when I first moved here, before I started getting the 404s! I can figure out how to forward with my new router, but I wonder why they used to be open?

[Nir Arbel]

That might not be your problem, but the client uses UPnP to try to automatically forward the port, and I have this annoying problem with my router (Google WiFi) where say I'm using it on my laptop, and after a while the laptop gets a different IP address on the local network from my router, when SoulseekQt tries to map the port again the router won't let it because it's already mapped to the old IP address, and what SoulseekQt does then automatically is try to remove the existing mapping but my router then gives it a UPnP 'unauthorized' error. If that happens to be your problem you can try selecting a different port using one of the buttons on the top when you're looking at options->login or try to manually configure the router to get rid of the mapping.

[Angel Marcloid]

I wonder if that was the case for me, though I set up a dedicated IP so I don't think mine changes.

Either way, I just changed it to a random number, 3000, and now they appear open! So maybe I will have to repeat this process sometimes.

[Nir Arbel]

I wonder if the problem is related to the UPnP lease duration. I set it for a very long time worrying that it might expire while the IP is still being used, but if the lease duration is only counted from when the IP (or port) was last used it might make more sense to make it really short so it can be replaced if it needs to be. I'll play around with it.

[Angel Marcloid]

Thanks for looking into it! For now I'll chase it around by changing the ports and see if that does the trick. Thanks again.

[Nir Arbel]

No problem! Let me know if it happens again and I'll send you a build that sets a short lease duration and refreshes it every few minutes.

[Angel Marcloid]

Hey Nir. Seems like I might need that build! I have been checking the ports nearly every day because they are open at first and then end up closing. If you have the time. Thank you!

[Nir Arbel]

Hey Angel,

I actually played around with the short lease duration thing after we talked, but it looks like there's no way to implement it in a way that is sure to work on every router. For example on my router, I can't renew the lease before it expires (the lease remains the same length if the port is already mapped to my IP address, or I get an error if my IP address changed). And apparently lots of routers just ignore the lease duration parameter altogether. But I *did* make a change that tries to renew the port mapping every five minutes, so if it expires for any reason, this should renew it quickly provided that your IP address hasn't changed:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QMwUmCrOGSypL5NYYVJdr4o_Gb7PsmVU/view?usp=share_link

[Angel Marcloid]

Thanks so much Nir. I wonder if I could change this in my router settings. Maybe I will look around.

However, I am so sorry I did not specify this...I am on a Mac. Does that make it so you have to do this again? Either way I will make a donation because I appreciate your hard work.

[Nir Arbel]

Ah oops, I forgot to ask what OS you're on. Don't worry about donating, this stuff helps make the client better for everyone. This is the latest build for macOS with port forwarding renewal every five minutes:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-3FiZ0zlBg3ie1zvczzGUhNye65cpUEt/view?usp=share_link