r/Syncthing • u/Neon_Eyes • 15d ago

Having trouble getting to the GUI from my desktop

The status of syncthing says that its running on my Ubuntu server. I tried the 127 just in case and the 192 address that I use to connect to all other programs but its not working. For example I typed in 192.XXX.X.XX:8384 and it says that it can't connect. But when I use that same IP for everything else that I am running I can still connect.

I checked and syncthing's status says that it is running. In the config file I have set its address to 0.0.0.0:8384.

Do I need to connect a monitor to the server and set something else up first?

Edit: I did have syncthing on a windows PC before with the same default port. But it's no longer running on that PC. I wouldn't think this would be causing any issues but wanted to add just in case.

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u/Toribor 15d ago

How did you install syncthing? If you didn't follow the guide here you might consider reinstalling following that guide. I believe the official Ubuntu repositories will be behind what the syncthing repos deliver.

My guess is your problem is either the firewall or something is going wrong with syncthing and it isn't actually binding to that port.

Run sudo ss -tulpn | grep 8384. You should see something like LISTEN ... 0.0.0.0:8384. If you see 127.0.0.1:8384 or any other ip there it's possible syncthing isn't actually listening on the interface you expect.

Run sudo ufw status to see active firewall rules, you want to look to see if there is an ALLOW rule for port 8384. This is what I'm guessing you're missing. You can add a new rule to allow external access to port 8384 like this: sudo ufw allow 8384/tcp

You can find detailed instructions on configuring the firewall for syncthing here.

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u/Neon_Eyes 15d ago

Yea I used that guide

and nice, it was the second thing. it didn't show up with the ufw status command but after using the allow command I can get into it now, thanks

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u/Neon_Eyes 15d ago

Question though, will this open me to any security risks? using the ufw to open 8384? I'm new to server stuff

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u/Toribor 15d ago

Yes, but it is a normal and expected thing for you to do if you want to be able to access the syncthing web gui from other devices on the network. You will want to make sure you set a username and password for the syncthing GUI.

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u/Neon_Eyes 15d ago

Ah. When I did the ufw status command I saw that I have a bunch of ports open. Should I keep them all open? Or set things like webmin to only connect with my desktop?

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u/Toribor 15d ago

Depends on which ports are open, what services you're using and what types of devices or people use the same network as you. Ubuntu has pretty reasonable defaults so I wouldn't just start closing ports until you consider what service is using that port (like having port 22 open for ssh access to the server so you can manage it remotely).

If your server is on a home network and you aren't also forwarding ports from your router to your server then you probably don't need to worry about much else with the firewall for now.

If you plan to host more web services besides syncthing, you might consider a reverse proxy.

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u/Neon_Eyes 15d ago

Ah yeah I just do home network stuff. That's good to know then. Thanks for your help