vagrant port forwarding doesn't work: Connection reset by peer

Question

ssh port forwarding (which is enabled by default) works fine, but my custom port forwardings don't.

I took the config below from the official docs, but it doesn't work :(

host machine runs Ubuntu 17.04

Vagrantfile is:

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
    config.vm.box = "ubuntu/xenial64"
    # though, I've also tried ubunty/zesty64 and centos/7 - with same results
    config.vm.provision :shell, path: "vagrant/provision.sh"
    config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 3000, host: 3001
end

http server is node.js, listening port 3000 at guest machine

when I run vagrant up I see that there are 2 port forwardings:

==> default: Forwarding ports...
    default: 3000 (guest) => 3001 (host) (adapter 1)
    default: 22 (guest) => 2222 (host) (adapter 1)

I successfully connect to guest via ssh on port 2222, thus the forwarding 22 (guest) => 2222 (host) works fine.

Accessing port 3000 from the guest machine (via ssh) also works fine:
(the following is a quote from ssh console when connected to guest machine)

ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ curl -v http://localhost:3000/
*   Trying 127.0.0.1...
* Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1) port 3000 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> Host: localhost:3000
> User-Agent: curl/7.47.0
> Accept: */*
> 
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Content-Type: text/plain
< Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2017 12:34:29 GMT
< Connection: keep-alive
< Content-Length: 12
< 
Hello World
* Connection #0 to host localhost left intact

But requesting port 3001 directly from host machine fails:
(the following is a quote from a regular console (not ssh) on local host machine)

$ curl -v http://127.0.0.1:3001/
*   Trying 127.0.0.1...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) port 3001 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> Host: 127.0.0.1:3001
> User-Agent: curl/7.52.1
> Accept: */*
> 
* Recv failure: Connection reset by peer
* Curl_http_done: called premature == 1
* Closing connection 0
curl: (56) Recv failure: Connection reset by peer

I also found out this has nothing to do with firewall, 'cause it's disabled (on both machines):

ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ sudo ufw status
Status: inactive

I also noticed that all other ports on both machines return the same:

ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ curl http://127.0.0.1:3003/
curl: (7) Failed to connect to 127.0.0.1 port 3003: Connection refused

— which simply means that those ports are closed on respective machine, and that is completely OK.

And only the port 3001 on host machine returns Connection reset by peer:

$ curl http://127.0.0.1:3001/
curl: (56) Recv failure: Connection reset by peer

— that means that something's wrong in network settings. But what exactly?

please, help me to set up port forwardings correctly!

UPDATE 1

Maybe this will be important: when upping vagrant, the following is printed in console:

==> default: Clearing any previously set forwarded ports...
==> default: Clearing any previously set network interfaces...
==> default: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration...
    default: Adapter 1: nat
    default: Adapter 2: hostonly
==> default: Forwarding ports...
    default: 3000 (guest) => 3001 (host) (adapter 1)
    default: 22 (guest) => 2222 (host) (adapter 1)

Maybe the reason is that Vagrant for some reason forwards ports for the wrong adapter? Maybe it should forward for hostonly, and it forwards for nat? I don't understand it, it's just an assumption.

At surface level, it looks fine. [This](https://github.com/siggame/colisee-injector/blob/master/Vagrantfile) is one of my vagrant files and its similar. It must be something in your vagrant/provision.sh? — Russley Shaw, Jul 14 '17 at 19:23
@RussleyShaw, no, it currently has only Node.JS installation, that's all: ```cd ~``` ```curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -``` ```sudo apt-get install -y nodejs``` — whyer, Jul 14 '17 at 19:28
@RussleyShaw, yes I am. In [your Vagrantfile](https://github.com/siggame/colisee-injector/blob/master/Vagrantfile) the same box is used, [`ubuntu/xenial64`](https://app.vagrantup.com/ubuntu/boxes/xenial64), and this box supports only this provider: VirtualBox (at least, this is what is said on its page, I didn't check it though) — whyer, Jul 14 '17 at 19:51
@RussleyShaw, I just switched to `ubuntu/zesty64` box — the problem persists :( — whyer, Jul 14 '17 at 20:02
The only thing else I can recommend is reinstalling Vagrant. I've solved at least two problems that way. — Russley Shaw, Jul 14 '17 at 20:04
@RussleyShaw, unfortunately, reinstallation of Vagrant didn't help either. — whyer, Jul 14 '17 at 20:17
May be this answer is helpful: https://stackoverflow.com/a/70918385/2783908 — S.Roshanth, Jan 30 '22 at 20:00

score 22 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 17 '17 at 13:36

Finally, I was able to fix it!

The reason wasn't a misconfiguration of port forwarding, neither some settings of Vagrant, nor even VirtualBox, nor Guest, nor Host OS.

The reason was I've incorrectly set up Node.JS' port listening.

What I've done (incorrect): I've set it up to listen port 3000 on guest machine. I thought that guest machine's local IP, available from inside itself, is, as usual, 127.0.0.1. Below is my Node.JS server code:

const http = require('http');

const hostname = '127.0.0.1';
const port = 3000;

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
    res.statusCode = 200;
res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/plain');
res.end('Hello World\n');
});

server.listen(port, hostname, () => {
    console.log(`Server running at http://${hostname}:${port}/`);
});

What I had to do (correct): set it up to listen that same port, but on other IP: 0.0.0.0 — this is the correct local IP of guest machine, that is available to it itself internally, when using together with port forwarding.

Thus, my Vagrantfile is correct; here is what I've fixed in my Node.JS server:

const hostname = '0.0.0.0';
const port = 3000;
...
server.listen(port, hostname, () => {

P. S. I apologize for the inconvenience I caused by this question. Thank you to everyone who helped me! At first, when I found the solutuion, I was going to delete this question, but decided that it'd be better if I answer it myself instead, so that others like me can save their and other people's time spent on fixing such cases in future, so I decided to keep it.

Thanks, even though I wasn't trying to do this for Node, I was able to use the same configuration `0.0.0.0` as the hostname in Elasticsearch Kibana, to browse on my host — inostia, Jun 26 '18 at 22:05
@whyer Thanks for not deleting this question. It just solved my problem. — Sergio Acosta, Dec 28 '18 at 21:39
This is amazing. I had the same problem with a Ruby app and binding the web server to 0.0.0.0 was the solution. Thanks! — Leonard Teo, Jan 13 '20 at 17:45

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 21 '20 at 19:24

switching from 127.0.0.1:3000 to 0.0.0.0:3000 indeed exposes the guest running services to the host network, however, i feel like the better way should exist, anyway, worth mentioning, I noticed that running netstat -nltp on guest OS will show the 'foreign addresses' which are the ones that will be exposed to the host OS.

vagrant port forwarding doesn't work: Connection reset by peer

UPDATE 1

2 Answers2

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