OBS cannot connect to server rtmp port when port is forwarded on router

pvpdm · July 1, 2025, 7:33pm

I am trying to set up live streaming on my instance, but I have issues with the rtmp port. My server is hosted made accessible via a reverse proxy running on another machine, but still on the same network. Due to my reverse proxy software (caddy) not being able to handle rtmp traffic (as far as I know), I have just set up a port forward from the machine running the peertube instance (on docker) to the router.

When trying to stream using the above configuration, OBS tries to connect to the server and doesn’t fail immediately; instead, it takes a few seconds for it to stop (which I think means that there is a route to the server). As opposed to that, when the port forward on the router is wrong, when the port on the rtmp url is different, when trying to use directly an ip like « localhost » or the local ip of the machine, OBS fails immediately.

ArnaudTD · July 2, 2025, 4:30am

I’ve never done livestreaming with Peertube, but I saw a video about it yesterday.
Have you try using rtmps like explained here? https://video.fedihost.co/w/dAoCCAVrJ1t7xQw7U9GUbu?start=6m27s

pvpdm · July 2, 2025, 11:05am

So, I did some more investigating (nmap is a great tool) and I got streaming to work, but it is a bit of a bodge: streaming only works if I try to stream directly to the docker container’s ip.

For some reason, (unlike port 9000) port 1935 is only accessible on 172.69.0.42 (predefined docker ip) and not on my 192.168.1.0/24 ip that my machine has on the local network, which means that I can’t forward it to my router.

I can’t find anything in the default docker-compose.yml config that would suggest that one would be exposed to all hosts and one wouldn’t, so if anyone could be of help I’d appreciate it.

JohnLivingston · July 2, 2025, 12:09pm

Check that this line is in your docker-compose file:

github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube

support/docker/production/docker-compose.yml

5bceb3715


      
          # Use a static IP for this container because nginx does not handle proxy host change without reload
          # This container could be restarted on crash or until the postgresql database is ready for connection
          networks:
            default:
              ipv4_address: 172.18.0.42
              ipv6_address: fdab:e4b3:21a2:ef1b::42
          env_file:
            - .env
          
          ports:
           - "1935:1935" # Comment if you don't want to use the live feature
          #  - "9000:9000" # Uncomment if you use another webserver/proxy or test PeerTube in local, otherwise not suitable for production
          volumes:
            # Remove the following line if you want to use another webserver/proxy or test PeerTube in local
            - assets:/app/client/dist
            - ./docker-volume/data:/data
            - ./docker-volume/config:/config
          depends_on:
            - postgres
            - redis
            - postfix

This is what makes the port available on the host.

pvpdm · July 2, 2025, 1:34pm

It was a docker compose issue with it not changing the settings.

I have set docker-compose.yml to allow port 1935 since I have been trying to get streaming to work, but, it turns out that docker compose restart doesn’t change the ports like docker compose down && docker compose up -d do.

I have been using this piece of software to self host several services over the last 1,5 year and this is the first time I notice this.

JohnLivingston · July 2, 2025, 2:11pm

oh, right! i remember having similar issues once… That’s probably why I always use down and up instead of restart, without remembering why