Hi all,
I admit defeat… I need your help… I’ve been going around in circles trying to fix this 
I have an internal instance of MQTT broker (HA integration) which is working fine.
I am looking at connecting an external (over the internet) ESP8266 device via MQTT to an external MQTT server/broker and then have my internal Mosquitto instance talk to that (bridged).
But for the life of me I can’t get my internal Mosquitto broker to talk to another MQTT broker.
I get the following error:
[23:15:06] INFO: Starting NGINX for authentication handling…
[23:15:06] INFO: Starting mosquitto MQTT broker…
1622240106: Loading config file /share/mosquitto/hivemq.conf
1622240106: mosquitto version 1.6.12 starting
1622240106: |-- *** auth-plug: startup
[23:15:06] INFO: Successfully send discovery information to Home Assistant.
[23:15:06] INFO: Successfully send service information to the Supervisor.
1622240106: Config loaded from /etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf.
1622240106: Loading plugin: /usr/share/mosquitto/auth-plug.so
1622240106: ├── Username/password checking enabled.
1622240106: ├── TLS-PSK checking enabled.
1622240106: └── Extended authentication not enabled.
1622240106: Opening ipv4 listen socket on port 1883.
1622240106: Opening ipv6 listen socket on port 1883.
1622240106: Opening websockets listen socket on port 1884.
1622240106: Warning: Mosquitto should not be run as root/administrator.
1622240106: Connecting bridge hivemq (broker.hivemq.com:1883)
1622240106: mosquitto version 1.6.12 running
1622240106: New connection from 127.0.0.1 on port 1883.
1622240106: Socket error on client , disconnecting.
1622240106: Socket error on client local.sdf987wefhjfd98w7e, disconnecting.
1622240112: Connecting bridge hivemq (broker.hivemq.com:1883)
1622240112: Socket error on client local.sdf987wefhjfd98w7e, disconnecting.
1622240112: New connection from 172.30.32.1 on port 1883.
My config file is:
connection hivemq
address broker.hivemq.com:1883
topic # in
topic +/remote_cloudmqtt/# out
start_type automatic
remote_clientid sdf987wefhjfd98w7e
I have tried:
try_private false
bridge_protocol_version 311
I’ve tried specifying a user and password
I’ve tried it with no remote_clientid
And other settings that I can’t remember…
I’ve tried it to a different cloud based provider, I’ve also tried it to an internal esp8266 that I set up as a bridge.
I said I had tried a few things and gone around in circles 
Can someone please help…
J.