Accessing Vera through ddns without findvera.com

Community Playground General Discussions
1

Maybe someone has specific experience with Linksys routers, and can help me with this…

Although I am currently using findvera.com, and probably will continue to do so, I like to experiment and have back doors into my remote systems. I HAVE been able to access Vera by using my ddns service (TZO) but in order to do so, I had to put the local vera IP address into a DMZ on my router. This opens port 80 so no port number is needed when you type in the ddns URL from a remote browser. Vera seems to work fine.

This is obviously not a good long-term solution however. What I really need to do is route Vera’s port 80 to another unused port that I can forward on the router, say 50000.

Problem…
I cannot figure out how to do this on my Linksys router. Belkin routers have this ability built into the port forwarding tables, but I don’t see it on the Linksys. They do show a Port Triggering table, which I suspect does this, but even after reading the help screen a number of times, I still do not understand.

If anyone can direct me, I would appreciate it. The router is a Linksys WCG300 Wireless Cable Gateway.

Thanks,
Anthony

2

Make some screen shots or post a link to the User Manual, and I’ll try to figure out if it’s possible.
Another way is to start two web servers on Vera, the default one on port 80 and another one on another port.

This command line will do the trick:

PORT=3480
(cp /etc/lighttpd.conf /etc/lighttpd.conf.${PORT}) && (sed -i “s/#server.port = 81/server.port = ${PORT}/” /etc/lighttpd.conf.${PORT}) &&
(cat /etc/lighttpd.conf.${PORT} | grep -i server.port) && (lighttpd -f /etc/lighttpd.conf.${PORT})

In order to start it automatically each time Vera start up, you’ll have to modify also this file:

/etc/init.d/lighttpd

to look like this:

#!/bin/sh /etc/rc.common

Copyright (C) 2006 OpenWrt.org

START=50

BIN=lighttpd
DEFAULT=/etc/default/$BIN
LOG_D=/var/log/$BIN
RUN_D=/var/run
PID_F=$RUN_D/$BIN.pid

start() {
[ -f $DEFAULT ] && . $DEFAULT
mkdir -p $LOG_D
mkdir -p $RUN_D
lighttpd -f /etc/lighttpd.conf.${PORT}
$BIN $OPTIONS
}

stop() {
[ -f $PID_F ] && kill $(cat $PID_F)
killall lighttpd
}

change ${PORT} with the port number that you want your serve to listen on.

3

Thanks for the tip CJ, when you say PORT=3480 at the top, I then see 81 in the command you suggest to run
Can you clarify what the 81 and 3480 are for? Is this simply a typo? I would love to run Vera on port 88 or some other obscure port I’m not using.

I have a slightly different issue with ports. I have an HP Home Server (also using TZO DDNS for my domain) that runs on port 80 and need vera to be on an alternate port. Love how Vera can run 2 copies of the web server…nice

I’ll SSH into the box and see what I can do to get this working and document the port forwarding aspects as well

4

Thanks, CJ
The link to the Linksys Router user guide is http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/support/WCG200/download I tried to attach the manual, but the file was too big for the forum.

If I were to successfully “redirect” Vera’s port 80 to a new outside port, would findvera.com still work? If that were a problem, then I guess I would need to run the second web server on Vera. I’m probably not likely to do so, however, because messing with the Linux command lines is a bit out of my comfort zone, particularly considering my system is 750 miles from where I’m sitting. That makes resets and such difficult.

I guess for me, seeing as how I’m only doing this ddns access for fun, I will only continue if I can keep the modifications within the router.

Thanks a bunch for your help and the detailed solution you presented,
Anthony

5

Seriously, get a normal router. Preferably one of those flashable with Tomato or dd-wrt: Asus, some Linksys, some Buffalo. They would have all options you need.

Putting device into DMZ is very dangerous - you effectively disable a firewall for Vera, while let any hacker a free pass to the device. Besides controlling appliances (fire hazard at least), once they hack into Vera they most likely will be able to go anywhere in your LAN.

What would be really cool is to build an access to Vera the same way Yoics or Hamachi work - Vera would maintain SSH connection to my simple web application, thus letting this webapp to access Vera without port forwarding or dyndns at all. Got to figure it out…

6

Port forwarding from another external port to vera’s 80 internal port has nothing to do with findvera.com. You don’t need to open any ports for findvera.com to work.

7

[quote=“myhomeserver, post:3, topic:164531”]Thanks for the tip CJ, when you say PORT=3480 at the top, I then see 81 in the command you suggest to run
Can you clarify what the 81 and 3480 are for? Is this simply a typo? I would love to run Vera on port 88 or some other obscure port I’m not using.[/quote]

PORT=3480 it’s the new port at wich Vera’s web server will listen too.
#server.port = 81 is the default config line (that’s commented) that I’m replacing in the servers config
There’s no type anywhere, just replace at the beginning 3480 with your desired port an runt the bellow command.

Another more simple method it will be to do it from the firewall
PORT=3480
iptables -A OUTPUT -t nat -p tcp --dport $PORT -j REDIRECT --to-port 80
iptables -A PREROUTING -t nat -p tcp --dport $PORT -j REDIRECT --to-port 80

8

I swear by Linksys RV042 VPN Routers. Can’t beat them for the $. PPTP VPN, which even works from an iPhone. Then can reach Vera securely (also using DynDNS to locate it, which the RV042 supports) from outside the LAN.

Charlie

9

The advice in this thread to open port 3480 to the Vera inside of my router worked wonders. I’d been having communications issues for 6 weeks when I could no longer connect remotely. I had just gotten a DDNS working with Vera inside of my old faithful D-Link 655 router that I brought out of retirement when I come across this thread.