Homeassistant.local:8123/ won't load due to 'ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED'

Configuration
1

I recently came home from a 2 week holiday and I can’t access Home Assistant via the homeassistant.local:8123/ or the app.

The app says it’s an SSL error wirh a 1200 code NSURLErrorDomain. I have no idea what has changed, it has been working fine for more than a year. Possible there could have been power/router outage while I was away, but these interuptions have never caused a problem before.

This may be unconnected but by Nabu Casa Home Assistant Cloud Subscription renewed while I was away.

Has anyone got any ideas how I can fix this?

I am a basic level user who cobbled together HA on Raspberri Pi 4 using YouTube tutorials, using a surface level understanding of how it all works, so troubleshooting is a challenge for me!

2

Is your HA using SSL internally?
It is something you have to specifically set up!

Most likely your browser just defaults to HTTPS when you type in the address, so try to type the entire address, ie. http://homeassistant.local:8123

If that fails, then try http://:8123
The IP should be visible on the monitor output on the HA server.

3

Thank you Wally. Have tried both those but still getting the same error.

I don’t recall setting up SSL specifically. I know the IP address for the Pi as it’s connected to my router, but that’s not loading. Assume I need to connect a monitor to access the terminal directly?

4

The terminal will write out the IP address, but you should be able to see it in your router too somewhere.

5

To update on the issue I am still having no joy accessing the browser. I have confirmed the IP address.

I have retraced my steps in setting up and potentially have an idea of where the issue lies, but i’m not sure how to resolve it.

HAOS is on the Raspberri Pi 4 and I setup a static IP in the HA UI. I set port forwarding rules in my router to for port 80 and 443, and then set up add-ons for remote access (MariaDB and NGINX Proxy). I used DuckDNS to get a subdomain and added this to NGINX, along with HA IP address and forwarding port 8123. On SSL tab I selected ‘request SSL certificate’ option.

And I think this is the issue. I have seen a separate thread about NGINX certificate not auto-renewing, and given it has been a year I am assuming that mine hasn’t renewed, hence the SSL error.
See related issue:

The issue is I have no idea how to renew it, or how to force the renewal retry. I am locked out of the HA browser UI, and haven’t received any emails about the renewal from NGINX.

Would appreciate any thoughts on what next steps should be to confirm if the renewal is the issue and force it if it is?!

6

If you are running NGinX, then you local unencrypted port should still be open on http://homeassistant.local:8123 or http://<IP of HA>:8123

7

Even if you had setup nginx reverse proxy w/ssl (which would be an odd/redundant thing to do if you also have a HA Cloud subscription), you should still be able to connect directly to the HA server on port 8123 without ssl; the cert is only used by nginx not by HA itself.

Also if the cert was merely expired you would get a safety warning and be able to click-through to the site, so I would suggest that is not the root cause.

A few other people reported getting the same error as you when they switched from using HA Cloud to setting up a local nginx proxy — the app was still trying to use the previous settings, so maybe try removing the cloud option anywhere you can.

Also, if you know the Pi’s IP address, open that in a web browser, e.g. http://192.168.1.20:8123/