I don't like admitting this in public...but i'll keep the port closed for now

[Trepidati0n]

I opened up the port on my "router" to accept placeshifter from an external source. And I put in the IP of my router (not the internal address I might add) and it connected right up (did it at a neighbor's house).

One small problem...it never prompted me for a user ID or a password

Is this normal?

[reggie14]

That's strange. I connect to my server from school and it always asks me to log in.

I guess I only have two somewhat obvious questions for you. First, when you were at your neighbor's house are you sure you weren't on your wireless network?

Second, did you check to make sure your router's IP address is in the public address space for IP addresses? I've actually seen some ISPs handing out NATed addresses.

I think Sage just checks if the inbound connection is from the same subnet. If it is, then Sage doesn't ask for a password, as it assumes that the connection is soley in someone's LAN. I don't think that's always the best idea, but it usually works well. I know there has been some talk on the forums about trying to make it configurable, but to the best of my knowledge that has not happened.

I suppose its possible that Sage is somehow getting confused because you're accessing it from another LAN that happens to use the same NATed subnet. For instance, its quite likely that your server's (internal) address is 192.168.1.*. Similarly, its likely when you are at your neighbor's house your (internal) address is 192.168.1.*.

If that's the case then Sage really dropped the ball on security. I doubt they make such a huge mistake, but I suppose its possible.

[bcjenkins]

You can try setting this to true: miniclient/authenticate_local_connections=false

while you work with SageTV support.

B

[ToxMox]

Perhaps your neighbor is stealing your wireless access

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by Trepidati0n

I opened up the port on my "router" to accept placeshifter from an external source. And I put in the IP of my router (not the internal address I might add) and it connected right up (did it at a neighbor's house).

One small problem...it never prompted me for a user ID or a password

Is this normal?

Since you are able to connect to your router's LAN IP, then you are on the local network, so it doesn't prompt for password. And how are you able to connect to your router from your neighbor's house using the LAN IP? As someone mentioned above, are you connected wirelessly to your router? If yes, then this is normal.

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Since you are able to connect to your router's LAN IP, then you are on the local network, so it doesn't prompt for password. And how are you able to connect to your router from your neighbor's house using the LAN IP? As someone mentioned above, are you connected wirelessly to your router? If yes, then this is normal.

You may want to re-read that; he said he DIDN'T connect to the internal IP of his router. He connected to the WAN IP (not LAN).

The only other possibility I can think of is the OP may have placed his Sage server in the DMZ; if he and his neighbor are on the same ISP, then their addresses might be similar enough to fool SageTV into thinking they are on the same network.

Lots of if's, I know, but hey, I'm a SQL guy, not a network engineer.

[hemicuda]

mine always asks for user/pass; no matter where I am.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I suppose its possible that Sage is somehow getting confused because you're accessing it from another LAN that happens to use the same NATed subnet. For instance, its quite likely that your server's (internal) address is 192.168.1.*. Similarly, its likely when you are at your neighbor's house your (internal) address is 192.168.1.*.

NAT addresses are not visible on the ISP side of the router (the 'AT' in NAT is Address Translation), so the 192.168.x addresses would not be visible, only the real ISP-issued IP address would be seen.

I would also guess that the OP had connected to his own wireless LAN... When you access the router using the 'public' IP address from within the LAN, the routers I have worked with pass the connection using the NAT addresses, so it still looks like an internal connection

[hemicuda]

nielm, think the OP might need to look into wifi encryption? When I first moved into this sub there were probably 8-9 APs I could see w/ my hi-gain setup. It's 6mon later and maybe one within range doesn't have some form of WEP/WPA/2. It's nice when I'm on the road to be able to check my emails w/o having to track down a commercial hotspot, but people really should enable the highest encryption their hardware allows for their own protection. If a person wants to use an open AP they don't have to be in front of the building, ya know. Sorry to get OT. Just my 'public service' announcement for the day

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by nielm

NAT addresses are not visible on the ISP side of the router (the 'AT' in NAT is Address Translation), so the 192.168.x addresses would not be visible, only the real ISP-issued IP address would be seen.

I don't know why they would do this, but part of the Sage connection protocol could be a host identifying its own IP address in the payload. I've sort of always been suspicious of this exactly because I can use my external IP to connect to my server without logging in.

Evidently not suspicious enough to break out Ethereal/Wireshark, but still a little curious...

When you access the router using the 'public' IP address from within the LAN, the routers I have worked with pass the connection using the NAT addresses, so it still looks like an internal connection

At the same time, that doesn't work exactly how it should. If its an internal connection, Sage should pass video to the client without transcoding. At least when I try it on my systems, Sage will transcode when I connect to my external IP, but doesn't when I connect to my internal IP. Presumably its the Placeshifter client that decides if its going to ask for transcoded stuff, rather than leaving it up to the server to decide if its an internal connection.

I actually don't have a problem with that at all. In fact, its actually nice when I want to test transcoding from home. But, in a more practical sense, it probably shouldn't work like that.

[Trepidati0n]

Well..it asks for authentication now. What did it for me was I needed to restart the service after I added the user. Not sure if this is a bug or not, its all cool though. My guess is something was wonky and the ol' "just restart it" did the trick. I really need to start rebooting every time I make change to Sage just to make sure it sticks. Just hard right now since the wife started recording scrubs...and that pretty much puts at me 90% record time during hours I can work on the box.

Now to just get placeshifter working on VISTA

----------------

As a slight derail on my own topic...using placeshifter on my local PC is very nice image quality.

As another slight derail, using the sageMC interface allows you to sneak into the backdoor for setup options that placeshifter usually hides.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Trepidati0n

using the sageMC interface allows you to sneak into the backdoor for setup options that placeshifter usually hides.

Such as what? The reason that some configuration settings in the default STV are hidden when using Placeshifter is because those settings are not used by a Placeshifter client, so changing them has no meaning.

- Andy

[doc]

Back in the v5 days my friend in New Zealand used to use placeshifter and it didn't ask her for a password from work.

We never did work out why.

I know it works properly now, not sure if she reinstalled or upgraded to v6, and she's on holiday now so I can't ask her for a week

[Trepidati0n]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Such as what? The reason that some configuration settings in the default STV are hidden when using Placeshifter is because those settings are not used by a Placeshifter client, so changing them has no meaning.

- Andy

IIRC I can't modify tuner settings etc in placeshifter. I can't modify the media directories, etc. This is what I saw the first time I used it...maybe I was blind. However, tinkering with those settings via a VNC from my client PC is slow and painful (has a hard time rednering that window as well as how it updates) while placeshifter is quick and snappy. At this time, as I try and get things running...it is, well, extremely helpful. I'm sorry if you don't find that having meaning.

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by Trepidati0n

IIRC I can't modify tuner settings etc in placeshifter. I can't modify the media directories, etc. This is what I saw the first time I used it...maybe I was blind. However, tinkering with those settings via a VNC from my client PC is slow and painful (has a hard time rednering that window as well as how it updates) while placeshifter is quick and snappy. At this time, as I try and get things running...it is, well, extremely helpful. I'm sorry if you don't find that having meaning.

Sorry, but that's not correct. The Placeshifter allows you to do all the things you list there just like you would in the regular SageTV UI.

Regarding the security stuff...

The cases of this that have been reported in the past were always due to the router NATing external addresses to something internal. So the server would get a connection from an outside IP address but the router would translate the packet and change the from IP to be that of the router. So the server couldn't actually know the connection was coming from outside since the router was masquerading it as an internal IP. This has only been reported on custom routers people have built running Linux; nothing a consumer would purchase off the shelf.

If you look at the server's log file it'll clearly printout the addresses in question and I can easily give you an answer if you post it here.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Trepidati0n

IIRC I can't modify tuner settings etc in placeshifter. I can't modify the media directories, etc.

Make sure you are running the default STV when you try those changes because I just ran Placeshifter to confirm that you can configure tuners, recording dirs, import dirs, and so on. If they don't show up when using the default STV w/o any customizations (SageTV3.xml), then SageTV needs to know about it because the default Placeshifter UI should be able to configure all appropriate items.

You can't change things like video renderer, decoder, and such, because those aren't used by the Placeshifter client. It also has no DVD settings or an option to play a DVD in the Media Center menu, because PS is not able to play DVDs. These are the items that I was referring to having no meaning when being able to change them i the PS UI.

Edit: Heh, took a few minutes too long typing.

- Andy

[Trepidati0n]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Sorry, but that's not correct. The Placeshifter allows you to do all the things you list there just like you would in the regular SageTV UI.

Regarding the security stuff...

The cases of this that have been reported in the past were always due to the router NATing external addresses to something internal. So the server would get a connection from an outside IP address but the router would translate the packet and change the from IP to be that of the router. So the server couldn't actually know the connection was coming from outside since the router was masquerading it as an internal IP. This has only been reported on custom routers people have built running Linux; nothing a consumer would purchase off the shelf.

If you look at the server's log file it'll clearly printout the addresses in question and I can easily give you an answer if you post it here.

As I mentioned...maybe I was blind; evidently I was. My guess I looked for it and initially missed it. Installed SageMC and saw it via the backdoor menu. It's all good, gives me something to try out tonight.

Also as mentioned a quick service restart fixed it. Now whether or not that correlation was causal is well. I restarted the service a day later..so I can't guarantee results. My router is COTS but doesn't give me an easy way of getting detailed logs. I’m gonna log this issue in my mind as “well, that was interesting” and put no blame on anyone.

Thanks for all your help

[doc]

Originally Posted by Narflex

The cases of this that have been reported in the past were always due to the router NATing external addresses to something internal. So the server would get a connection from an outside IP address but the router would translate the packet and change the from IP to be that of the router. So the server couldn't actually know the connection was coming from outside since the router was masquerading it as an internal IP. This has only been reported on custom routers people have built running Linux; nothing a consumer would purchase off the shelf.

If you look at the server's log file it'll clearly printout the addresses in question and I can easily give you an answer if you post it here.

Now you mention it, my friend was using a D-Link (504T I think) adsl router with firmware from the ISP (xtra.co.nz) . It was very problematic and she changed it for a Netgear DG834GT around the same time, so maybe that explains it.

[hechacker1]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Sorry, but that's not correct. The Placeshifter allows you to do all the things you list there just like you would in the regular SageTV UI.

Regarding the security stuff...

The cases of this that have been reported in the past were always due to the router NATing external addresses to something internal. So the server would get a connection from an outside IP address but the router would translate the packet and change the from IP to be that of the router. So the server couldn't actually know the connection was coming from outside since the router was masquerading it as an internal IP. This has only been reported on custom routers people have built running Linux; nothing a consumer would purchase off the shelf.

If you look at the server's log file it'll clearly printout the addresses in question and I can easily give you an answer if you post it here.

Although I havent noticed any problems with PlaceShifter's security on my end, I do see that as a security risk. Is there an option we can configure to always request the password, local or not?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by hechacker1

Is there an option we can configure to always request the password, local or not?

Set this property in sage.properties:

miniclient/authenticate_local_connections=true

- Andy