Caddy, Jellyfin & NordVPN not playing well together

1. The problem I’m having:

I’ve installed Jellyfin along with Caddy reverse-proxy on my home computer. Everything works fine, from both inside the network and externally, UNTIL I enable my NordVPN. After I enable NordVPN, no external connections come through. Additionally, the caddy server will NOT start if the VPN is turned on when I try to start it. I get an error.

Thank you in advance for your input. I’m not 100 up on networking, so I’m trying to fumble through this & learn what I can!

2. Error messages and/or full log output:

When VPN is disabled, all runs fine. If I turn on VPN, and then try running caddy, I get the following:

2023/06/14 18:14:26.518 ←[34mINFO←[0m using provided configuration {“config_file”: “Caddyfile”, “config_adapter”: “”}
2023/06/14 18:14:26.525 ←[34mINFO←[0m admin admin endpoint started {“address”: “localhost:2019”, “enforce_origin”: false, “origins”: [“//localhost:2019”, “//[::1]:2019”, “//127.0.0.1:2019”]}
2023/06/14 18:14:26.525 ←[34mINFO←[0m tls.cache.maintenance started background certificate maintenance {“cache”: “0xc0002fc000”}
2023/06/14 18:14:26.525 ←[34mINFO←[0m http server is listening only on the HTTPS port but has no TLS connection policies; adding one to enable TLS {“server_name”: “srv0”, “https_port”: 443}
2023/06/14 18:14:26.527 ←[34mINFO←[0m http enabling automatic HTTP->HTTPS redirects {“server_name”: “srv0”}
2023/06/14 18:14:26.528 ←[34mINFO←[0m tls cleaning storage unit {“description”: “FileStorage:C:\Users\Me\AppData\Roaming\Caddy”}
2023/06/14 18:14:26.529 ←[34mINFO←[0m http enabling HTTP/3 listener {“addr”: “:443”}
2023/06/14 18:14:26.530 ←[34mINFO←[0m tls.cache.maintenance stopped background certificate maintenance {“cache”: “0xc0002fc000”}
Error: loading initial config: loading new config: http app module: start: listen udp :443: bind: The requested address is not valid in its context.

3. Caddy version:

v2.6.4.

4. How I installed and ran Caddy:

No install. Copied downloaded exe to c:\caddy folder. Run it using caddy run --config Caddyfile

a. System environment:

Windows 10 Pro

b. Command:

caddy run --config Caddyfile

d. My complete Caddy config:

mydnssite.duckdns.org {
reverse_proxy 192.168.68.101:9110
tls {
dns duckdns mykey
}
}

5. Links to relevant resources:

Yeah, that’s normal. You can’t enable a VPN of that sort on the same machine as your run your services. VPNs do all kinds of crazy stuff with the machine’s networking stack. This isn’t something we can actively support. I suggest you reach out to NordVPN support to ask them if they can explain why it breaks web servers.

1 Like

Arrrgghhh isn’t that frustrating. I’ve been trying to get it to work myself for a week or more. I didn’t want to ask as I learn better from trial & error. But darn it…oh well it was a solid attempt!!

Thank you for your response!

1 Like

Hi ,

Just had the same issue and from 2 days i was trying to find out the root cause.

It seems its a simple issue. you need to enable the allow remote access while vpn connected.
for me it worked. Also you can split tunnel for specific app you want on VPN

3 Likes

And that did it! What a freaking pain that has been!!! HAHAHAHA

Many thanks to you!!!

2 Likes

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