Remote access, duckdns and forwarding problem

^what he said.

Obvious when somebody actually says it!

Thank you all, and the problem is solved!
So, I hope this benefits anyone with a router where the port forwarding is limited, and thanks again for all of you that helped. I’ll try and be as precise as I can with what I found to have worked.
Let’s assume you are following the instructions here and you get stuck on step 5. It asks you to set up a port forwarding rule on a router with limited rule creation capabilities.

For router Netgear CG3100D-2, instead of what the instructions tell you in step 5, create rule as follows:

name: ha_ssl
start 443
end 8123
protocol both
192.168.0.### (the static IP address you set up in previous steps)

The other rule that should already be set up is:

name: ha_letsencrypt
start 80
end 80
protocol both
192.168.0.### (the static IP address you set up in previous steps)

The configuration file should read:

http:
api_password: obviouslyimnotgoingtotellyou
ssl_certificate: /private/etc/letsencrypt/live/examplehome.duckdns.org/fullchain.pem
ssl_key: /private/etc/letsencrypt/live/examplehome.duckdns.org/privkey.pem
base_url: examplehome.duckdns.org:8123

obviously replacing the above password and duckdns items ā€œexamplehomeā€.

When logging in remotely and locally, I then found that I could access HA via:

https://examplehome.duckdns.org:8123/

I would also add that I found that app dDNS Broker very helpful for keeping duckdns up to date, even though it costs $4, it’s easy to set up and run on a Mac. Secondly I installed https://brew.sh to help in step 4 with the commands used to download the certificate, using the instructions here.

Certificate renewal is easiest on a Mac IMHO by using the command

sudo certbot certonly --standalone -n -d examplehome.duckdns.org -d www.examplehome.duckdns.org

but I’m trying to figure out the best way of setting that up as I’ve just discovered that crontab no longer works :frowning:

Thanks again everyone, and I hope this helps someone else in the future.

You can set a HA automation to renew the certificate, it’s in the guide :thumbsup:

AH! I thought that was it!!

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I tried that alas but the Mac syntax no longer wants to play.
So I’ve got up to step 7, but now I’m stuck.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ssl-cert-check

returns ā€œcommand not foundā€

It’s late and I need some sleep. One day I’ll buy a Raspberry pi and dive in there because I suspect most of these instructions are written for that system.

and adding :8123 to the base_url

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And that’s something I am going to try on my set up. I want to see if it breaks anything.

In the note below those commands is the location where the script for ssl-cert-check can be found. I can’t help with how you would then use that script on a Mac, but I’m sure somebody can point you in the right direction.

Hope this helps.

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thank you. I’ll hunt around tomorrow.