Second full license of BI5: can't get remote administration working

[tai4de2]

I have a BI5 installation running as a service, with a user set up in BI with admin and remote admin access. I can connect to the BI machine from a browser and log in successfully. I can use the iPhone app successfully.

But I cannot get BI remote admin to work from another machine on my LAN, using a second full license I bought for that purpose. No matter what I do, the remote status is either "Could not fetch settings" or "Remote already connected".









The exact same URL works in a browser from the machine where I am trying to run my second license of BI to remotely administer my main BI machine.

What am I doing wrong?

 

[eeeeesh]

see if this helps

 

[tai4de2]

see if this helps

I get a page that says “video unavailable”. Is the URL correct?

EDIT: I was able to view the video on my PC (didn't work on my iPhone). Thanks for that! But it didn't help unfortunately.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[pinko]

I tested my 2nd licenced BI Machine locally before remote deployment.
I'm 600km away on the remotely machine now and BI connection back to home is working great.
I am using the dropdown menu in the BI5 interface for connection back to my house.

Observations on setup:

• Both Instances (in BI5: About- Registration) have different licence keys (not support key)
• Both licences (in BI5: About- Registration) have same name and email address details. Also have register IP address box checked to help with client app connections.
• Both instances (BI5 :Startup -Operating system check box - run as windows service.

 

[tai4de2]

Thanks for the info. I double-checked my setup and found that it is configured similarly to what you describe. Each BI installation has its own key, and I've used the same name and email details on both installations. I'm trying to connect from within my LAN so I don't think the register IP box is relevant, but it's checked in both installations.

The BI instance I want to administer remotely is running as a service. The failure I'm describing occurs regardless of whether the BI instance I'm trying to configure is run as a service or not.

What's weird is that after "Could not fetch settings" *both* sides otherwise think they're connected. If I launch the BI console locally on the target BI machine, it says "remote user connected; disconnect?". And the console where I'm trying to use BI to do the remote management changes the error I'm getting from "Could not fetch settings" to "already connected".

So I think there are some bugs in the error path in this feature. But I still cannot get the feature to work at all.

I've emailed support.

 

[fenderman]

Disable all firewalls and test

 

[tai4de2]

Disable all firewalls and test

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried disabling Windows Defender on both sides. Same problem.

Besides -- the exact same URL I gave Blue Iris for the remote connection -- and which fails on Blue Iris -- works just fine in Firefox on the same machine. I would not expect this to be a firewall issue. And, the BI server side knows that there's an incoming connection because it closes the local console when I try to connect remotely.

 

[fenderman]

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried disabling Windows Defender on both sides. Same problem.

Besides -- the exact same URL I gave Blue Iris for the remote connection -- and which fails on Blue Iris -- works just fine in Firefox on the same machine. I would not expect this to be a firewall issue. And, the BI server side knows that there's an incoming connection because it closes the local console when I try to connect remotely.

the fact that the webserver works is irrelevant, firewalls may be blocking something very specific.

 

[tai4de2]

the fact that the webserver works is irrelevant, firewalls may be blocking something very specific.

You're right. But I did try completely disabling the firewall on both client and server, and it didn't fix the issue.

I'm wondering whether this has to do with my client machine's network configuration. I have VirtualBox installed on that machine, and it adds two virtual Ethernet adapters. I wonder if BI is somehow trying to use the wrong one for certain operations. I'm going to play with this to see whether fiddling with those settings fixes things.

EDIT: I disabled the 2 VirtualBox Ethernet adapters on my BI client machine and it didn't fix the problem.

 

[tai4de2]

I installed Wireshark on the client to see what's going on here.

89 120.487479 192.168.0.199 192.168.0.30 HTTP 287 GET /admin/config?session=0e2a0e39587a36a44218380f7aca176c HTTP/1.1
90 120.489941 192.168.0.30 192.168.0.199 HTTP 326 HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable

OK, so now I at least know that basic connectivity is working. But for some reason the BI server is unhappy.