TransWikia.com

Unable to Join Minecraft Server I Host When Using Domain Name, but can Still Join When Using the IP

Arqade Asked by HelloKnight on December 10, 2020

Issue/Background

I host a Minecraft server from a home machine. Recently I decided to open it up to the public, but to protect my private IP address (and to give the server a static IP) I set up a proxy for free by using SSLH on an AWS EC2 instance.

I allocated an Elastic IP to the instance, acquired a domain name, and registered my Elastic IP to the domain.

When I try to join the server with the domain name, specifying port 55565, I am unable to connect. I am however able to connect just fine when I join with the Elastic IP and port.

I am at a loss for what could be causing the problem here, but I am certainly overlooking some critical detail. Any suggestions as to what I might try next would be thoroughly appreciated.

What I’ve Tried

Thinking the issue could be with the nameservers not resolving the requests appropriately, I switched to Clooudflare nameservers (making sure to set the proxy status within Cloudflare to "DNS Only"). Didn’t work.

Still thinking the issue was with domain resolution, I set an SRV Record in Cloudflare so I shouldn’t even have to type out the port. Still didn’t work.

Thinking the issue could have to do with AWS, I set the security group’s inbound rules to accept inbound traffic of any type on any port. Still can’t connect, but hey I can ping it so that’s cool. (reverted this rule after testing)

Other Info

Not sure what else to include honestly. I’m still a bit of a beginner when it comes to this sorta thing. The DNS records that are listed for the domain are the A record and the SRV record.

I’m starting to thing the issue could be with the AWS instance. The configuration for SSLH looks like this

# This is a basic configuration file that should provide
# sensible values for "standard" setup.

verbose: false;
foreground: true;
inetd: false;
numeric: false;
transparent: false;
timeout: 2;
user: "sslh";

# Change hostname with your external address name.
listen:
(
    { host: "0.0.0.0"; port: "25565"; }
);

protocols:
(
    # { name: "ssh"; service: "ssh"; host: "localhost"; port: "22"; fork: true; },
    # { name: "openvpn"; host: "localhost"; port: "1194"; },
    # { name: "xmpp"; host: "localhost"; port: "5222"; },
    # { name: "http"; host: "localhost"; port: "80"; },
    # { name: "ssl"; host: "localhost"; port: "443"; log_level: 0; },
     { name: "anyprot"; host: "MY_PRIVATE_IP"; port: "25565"; }
);

One Answer

Ok I think I got this sorted now, but I'll post the answer in case anyone else is struggling similarly!

I found this guide from AWS about routing traffic to an EC2 instance. It looked promising, but I was really confused when it came to setting up the routing policy as there were some options I was unfamiliar with.

After changing the name servers to AWS with the domain registrar, you have to make a simple routing record to route traffic to the elastic IP of the instance. The routing type A should be all you need. No need for SRV records I think, though that may just be because of the way I have set up SSLH. I honestly don't know.

Remember that adding/modifying routing records takes time to propagate to all the name servers because of caching rules and such. So if you do this you need to wait a few minutes to see the results.

If anyone with more insight would like to chime in, please feel free, but for now I'm marking this as the answer.

Correct answer by HelloKnight on December 10, 2020

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question

Get help from others!

© 2024 TransWikia.com. All rights reserved. Sites we Love: PCI Database, UKBizDB, Menu Kuliner, Sharing RPP