Ubuntu – Node.js Site is Refusing Connection

node.jsUbuntu

I have a fresh Ubuntu instance setup on Amazon EC2. This instance has a node web server on it. When I try to hit my web site, I get an error in my browser. The error is:

Connect: Connection refused

I've confirmed that I can ping the machine. Yet when I enter http://[ipAddress] or http://[ipAddress]:8080 in my browser, I get the error above. When I start the node web server, it says:

Server listening on 8080

I implemented port forwarding using the following command:

iptables -A PREROUTING -t nat -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 
-j REDIRECT --to-port 8080

I believe I opened the firewall appropriately using the following commands:

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --sport 80 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

I'm stuck. I do not know why I'm getting a "Connection refused." I would sincerely appreciate any help or insights that someone can provide. At this point, I not sure if this message is coming from Ubuntu or from the Node server. Beyond that, I'm unfamiliar with how to track this issue down.

Thank you for your help. It means a lot to me.

Best Answer

Your server is most likely not listening on [ipAddress]:8080 is likely only listening on localhost:8080. You can check this using netstat You will need to configure your server to listen on all/appropriate IP addresses. No doubt how to do this will be in the documentation.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to Fix SSH Connection Refused

I would suggest the following in addition to the answers already present. Ensure you have some way to restore you're firewall after carefully checking its ruleset.

Disclaimer: if this device is an internet facing machine, this will drop all firewall protection from all interfaces, and could lead to your box getting owned.

# iptables --flush
# iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT
# iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
# iptables -P OUTPUT ACCEPT
# /etc/init.d/openssh-server restart

Then retry connection via ssh, if that fails check /var/log/auth.log.

You can also use

# lsof -i TCP:22

to see if the ssh port is opened and what IP address it's listening on.

edit: re: update, that doesn't appear to be ssh related (it seems to be in relation to sudo privilege elevation.

try tail -f /var/log/auth.log while attempting to connect via ssh.

Connection refused mean that the connection was explicitly rejected by either a firewall or the daemon it's self.

A normal connection would look something like this:

Mar 23 13:32:32 <hostname> sshd[20100]: Accepted password for <user> from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx port xxxxx ssh2
Mar 23 13:32:32 <hostname> sshd[20102]: (pam_unix) session opened for user <user> by (uid=0)

While an authentication failure will look like this:

Mar 23 13:35:54 <hostname> sshd[20177]: Failed password for <user> from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx port xxxxx ssh2

If it were blocked by sshd for some reason, that will be eluded to in the auth log, if it were blocked by the firewall (note the firewall may be on the host, client or somewhere in between) you'll see nothing.

Get back to us if that's the case, from there it'll be tcp dump on the client, server and any intermediary routers.

Node.js – Node.js Not Accessible from External IPs on Ubuntu

Thanks for adding the last netstat output, it really helped. You can't access node.js from outside because it is listening on localhost IP i.e 127.0.0.1. You need to configure node.js to listen on 0.0.0.0 so it will be able to accept connections on all the IPs of your machine.

var http = require('http');

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
    res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
    res.end('Hello World\n');
}).listen(8080, "0.0.0.0");
console.log('Server running at http://0.0.0.0:8080/');

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