Server on Virtualbox, can't configure ports/ip

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hcheyne
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Jul 14, 2019 12:40 pm

Server on Virtualbox, can't configure ports/ip

Post by hcheyne » Sun Jul 14, 2019 2:19 pm

Hi everyone,

I am running softether server on a virtualbox instance of Centos7 which is itself running on a Mac running mojave. Softether itself seems to be running ok, but I am having issues with the IP address/port setup. I have been following this tutorial and got to the end of step 9. I only want the L2tp ipsec setup for my phone and computers, so I am skipping the openvpn setup. I moved on to the client setup step and am getting stuck at the section:

Then enter your SoftEther VPN server's IP and Port number.
The port number could be any port that you have set as listening on your server.
By default, SoftEther listens on these four ports: 443, 992, 1194, 5555.
Here as an example where we use port 443:

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Destination VPN Server Host Name and Port Number: [VPN Server IP Address]:443
I know that the virtualbox has a connection out to the internet, because i can search google with lynx, and I have set up the virtualbox as a bridged connection so (and please correct me if this is wrong) port forwarding is not necessary and not even allowed. I have set the promiscuous mode to "allow VMs" and I am wondering if I need to set it to "allow all" instead. I also am wondering what I could be doing wrong with the IP address. I am using the address that appears after "inet" when I run $ip addr in centos. It has a /24 after it and I am unsure what to do with that. I tried starting the server using

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./vpnserver start
and the "let's get started by accessing the following url from your pc" wasn't loading from lynx on the virtualbox or from safari on my mac that is hosting the vb.

I also attempted to connect to the vpn from my phone's built in client using that IP address from $ip addr, the my user/password I created, and the shared secret I created. This would hang for a bit and then be unsuccessful/disconnect. What could I be missing in the server setup, the network config, virtualbox settings, anything? I don't know what the next move to try and fix this should be.

fenice
Posts: 183
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 4:23 pm

Re: Server on Virtualbox, can't configure ports/ip

Post by fenice » Sun Jul 14, 2019 4:10 pm

Although you haven't mentioned this I'm guessing that you're behind a NAT router, is that correct? If it is correct have you forwarded the ports to the LAN IP address of your VPN server?
Regards


Bill

hcheyne
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Jul 14, 2019 12:40 pm

Re: Server on Virtualbox, can't configure ports/ip

Post by hcheyne » Sun Jul 14, 2019 9:52 pm

thanks! That is probably the issue, I am going to try this out and see how it goes.

hcheyne
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Jul 14, 2019 12:40 pm

Re: Server on Virtualbox, can't configure ports/ip

Post by hcheyne » Sun Jul 14, 2019 11:24 pm

For the L2TP/IPSec VPN, it looks like I need to be forwarding UDP ports 500, 4500 and 1701 to the IP address of my server on virtualbox. Does that mean that my phone's VPN settings automatically check these ports when I connect?

Also, is it correct that I should use the "default gateway"/my router's external IP address as the host IP address when I am entering my VPN details on my phone's VPN service?

UPDATE - I just tried using these L2tp UDP ports for forwarding to my virtualbox's static ip address and using my router's external IP as the ip address in my phone settings and it is still unable to successfully connect. Are there any other things I might have missed or ways I could have forwarded these ports incorrectly?

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