Socks5 proxy requests stopped working

Posted on December 14, 2021

Good Day.

I want to set up a socks5 proxy so I can feed requests through my server with a different IP. I am running Ubuntu 20.04

This has been working for years for me and just stopped working and I can’t figure out why. It worked about ~2 weeks ago and just stopped.

On Droplet A (a.b.c.d) I will run the code once I’ve SSH’d in:

ssh -f -N -D 0.0.0.0:5678 localhost

Then on Droplet B (w.x.y.z) I will try and curl any webpage I can and always the same result happens:

curl -v -x socks5://a.b.c.d:5678 https://www.google.com

Normally this is able to work and retrieve the request. Last 24 hours since I have been trying it doesn’t. It gets stuck on:

*   Trying a.b.c.d:5678...
* TCP_NODELAY set

Then it hangs and never finishes the requests. Both droplets can curl google with success. I’ve tried rebooting, recreating droplets with new IPs, different ports same result every time. I’ve also tried playing with dante-server and same issue. I am not an expert in servers so I don’t know what to try or what could be the problem.

Hoping someone can point me in the right direction. Merci

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alexdo

December 15, 2021

Hello, @rbourne

I’ve just tested this with a fresh droplet and configured the proxy in Firefox and it works just fine. You can execute the command locally from your PC and then configure your browser to use the socks5 proxy.

With curl you can also add the --no-tcp-nodelay argument and give it another go. What you can also do is to telnet to droplet A on the port you specify - 5678 and see if this will connect without issues.

Regards, Alex