[SOLVED] Quassel client connection failure

I’m trying to connect to the quassel core I have installed on my freedombox.
I’m using pagekite for external connection. (I tried local connection too)
the username and password I use to connect to quassel are the same I use for the freedombox.

Yet I always get a connection refused error.

I followed no additional steps to configure quassel on the freedombox after installing it, as I could see no such interface.
I’m getting this problem using both quasseldroid and quassel-client on linux.

Where can I start to fix this? Is this a known issue?

Quassel does not run on HTTP(S) or SSH. It has it’s own port. So, it will not work with Pagekite. You best best is to use create an SSH tunnel and connect Quassel via that.

Quassel is not integrated into LDAP. So, it has it’s own username and password. I believe you will be setting this up the first time you connect to Quassel.

Since you are using Pagekite and your domain will be a pagekite provided domain, make sure you are using an Internal IP address to connect to Quassel service locally.

Thanks for the response.
Indeed, when I try to connect locally through the IP instead of just freedombox.local I get the initial configuration interface.

How can I go about setting up this SSH tunnel to connect from pagekite though?
(I’ve never set up such a thing)

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Umm… freedombox.local should have worked too! I wonder what went wrong there. Perhaps it is not a Linux/macOS machine on which it was tried?

For SSH tunnel, with an admin account you need to run the SSH command as follows:

ssh -L 4242:localhost:4242 -N myadminaccount@myfreedombox.example

You need use admin account to connect via SSH (or turn off restriction in Security page (not recommended)).

After successfully authenticating the command will wait. Then you can connect to Quassel on FreedomBox by connecting to domain “localhost” and port “4242”. You may be able to find apps for Android to open SSH tunnels in a similar way.

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Just tried again.
freedombox.local works on my linux machine, but not on my android phone.

I can’t seem to get ssh to work over Pagekite.
it keeps giving me this error:
ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

After doing a port scan of my kite on pagekite.me, it seems that port 22 is closed. I’ve had no luck in figureing out if there’s a way to open it up on their service though.
Is it possible to ssh on there, or will I have to create my own pagekite server with ssh activated?

I was able to reproduce the problem pagekite SSH service not working. I confirmed that Pagekite has been configured for SSH properly by FreedomBox. I don’t know what changed. I contacted Bjarni from upstream pagekite and asked about the SSH service not working. Awaiting response.

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So after following the ssh client configuration as per https://pagekite.net/wiki/Howto/SshOverPageKite/#client using netcat-openbsd on my linux machine and corkscrew for my termux setup (android).
(I’ll probably just use a termux widget to activate it on my phone)
I can use ssh tunneling on both devices now to use Quassel!
Thanks a lot for your help, all good now!

Maybe to make this easier, would it be possible to just use an http proxy just like for ssh, instead of piling on the tunnel?

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Perhaps. However, this would at least need a configuration update to Pagekite on the server similar to SSH. Let me know if this work out.

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Alright I’ll keep in touch if I mess with it. :slight_smile:

How can I mark this as solved?

Thanks! Edit the subject like and prepend ‘[SOLVED]’.

huh seems like I can’t edit anything. Only have flag, says I can’t delete either…

I see, I can make you a moderator if you are interested.

Sorry for the late reply. I would be interested, but unfortunately I wouldn’t have much time to dedicate to it at the moment. Can it be a (very) part time thing?