Hi folks, a little troubleshooting help here, please.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S9 with Android 10 rn. I use Firefox as my main browser, but I’ve tried this on others (Internet from Samsung, DuckDuckGo browser) and get the same result.

When I am at home, connected to my personal wifi network I want to connect to my self-hosted server at 192.168.68.137. In all browsers, just starting this week, I get “Can’t connect to the server” or “ERR_ADDRESS_UNREACHABLE”. This just was working fine the other day, but something (???) has changed and it won’t connect. When I am trying this, my phone’s IP is 192.168.68.106 so def on the same lan. And, my phone can connect to 192.168.68.100 without error - it’s just the .137 address it can’t connect to. This isn’t a DNS issue; I am trying to reach it only via the IP address.

The server is definitely up and other PCs can connect to it just fine on the same LAN / 192.168 segment. I’ve tried rebooting the phone, same result. I turned off my pihole ad blocker - same result.

The craziest thing (to me) is that if I disable wifi on my phone, (so now it’s on the cellular network) then connect my Wireguard VPN back into my home network, then I can browse to my home server. That should work, of course, but so should it work for me to connect while on the home wifi network without the VPN.

If anyone has any ideas, I would be very grateful.

EDIT: I rebooted the server and voila! The phone is connecting again. No idea why, but sure, OK. Thanks anyway, folks.

  • perishthethoughtOPEnglish
    1·
    1 month ago

    Hey, thanks. I’d really rather not change the server’s IP; it runs a number of docker-based services and I have other PCs configured to use the current address (like Rokus).

    Can a stock Android phone have a custom HOSTS file? Or could there be a firewall I didn’t install?

    I tried pinging the phone from the server. No responses at all. Not sure if that’s normal for Android or not.

    Both the server and phone have static IPs assigned and use the same gateway - 192.168.68.1 / 24.

    • codapineEnglish
      31·
      1 month ago

      Stock android without an unlocked bootloader will not give you access to the hosts file, and there shouldn’t be a firewall you don’t know about. Can you run a vbox or live USB on another machine on your network to see if it will see the server?

      I just saw you already answered about the same gateway and mask. Hm. I’m thinking there’s probably a janky setting on your router, that’s the only place I can think of that might have a poorly configured or unconfiugred firewall. Especially if it works on the cellular using the VPN.

      Good luck with it, I’m sorry I don’t have the exact answer!

      Edit - just saw your edit. Computing is like that sometimes! Glad you got it working. 👍

      • perishthethoughtOPEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        Thanks again and yep, I should have thought to reboot the server sooner.

        I had a thought after all the above. What if there were two devices in the lan with that same .137 IP? It’s inside the DHCP range but I thought having the router reserve the 137 address for my server would mean no other PC could get it.

        I’m gonna check out that angle, move the server to an IP outside the DHCP range next.