0.3.24 - Where did all my connections go? [resolved]

[Yatta99]

Saw the message a few days ago in the other area of the board to update all the old clients, and got the new version. I'm running Debian (squeeze) and with prior versions (0.3.22 and 0.3.23) I would have 10 to 20 connections within several minutes of client start-up and would settle in to 30 to 60 connections average. I even hit 100 connections, once and briefly. With the new client, 0.3.24, I can't get over 8 connections. I even created a bitcoin.conf file and gave it a maxconnections=64 (yes, I restarted the client) and still max out at 8 connections.

Every client version (22, 23, & 24) was unpacked to its own directory but all used .bitcoin as the data directory.

More weirdness: i just shut down 24 and started 23 back up and that is now not going over 8 connections? Did something change somewhere?

Is it aliens?  

[jgarzik]

Eight connections is the maximum outgoing connections by default.

Therefore, if you find yourself stuck at 8 connections, then you are probably not receiving any incoming connections.  That tends to point towards a firewall or port forwarding problem.

[TeraPool]

Pretty confusing I have to agree with you...

So you have 0.3.23 and 0.3.24 both installed on the same machine???

[Yatta99]

Pretty confusing I have to agree with you...

So you have 0.3.23 and 0.3.24 both installed on the same machine???

And 0.3.22, but this is Linux so nothing is actually installed as you would think of it as under Windows. The files just live in their own directories in my home directory. But, for obvious reasons, only one can be run at a time. Right now I'm fighting to get port 8333 open  My router says that 8333 is open and my software firewall says that 8333 is open but several port checker websites are telling me that 8333 is closed (and still just 8 connections). Someone is lying to me 

[Kosty]

How did your router tell you port 8333 is "open" ?

[riush]

Could UPNP be interfering with your router setup? IIRC that's new in 0.3.24. Just a wild guess, I have no idea about UPNP in detail.
Have you tried running something else (a webserver etc) on that port and test with that?

[Man From The Future]

Restart router, turn off UPNP in command line used to start bitcoind, and set up router how it should be set up. That, or get angry with your ISP! They might be using transparent proxies due to IPv4 issues, I don't think that's likely though?

[Yatta99]

After a few days of insanity (doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result  ) I fixed the 'problem'. It turns out that my Linksys router was lying to me. All the port forwarding info looked correct and showed as being enabled when logged into the router, but it really wasn't. I unplugged the router for several minutes, and then did a reset on it. After entering the port forwarding information back into it everything now works. Block chain is up to date now and I'm up to 20 connections and growing. Linksys routers are nice and easy to use, I just wish that they weren't so flaky 

[error]

After a few days of insanity (doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result  ) I fixed the 'problem'. It turns out that my Linksys router was lying to me. All the port forwarding info looked correct and showed as being enabled when logged into the router, but it really wasn't. I unplugged the router for several minutes, and then did a reset on it. After entering the port forwarding information back into it everything now works. Block chain is up to date now and I'm up to 20 connections and growing. Linksys routers are nice and easy to use, I just wish that they weren't so flaky 

DD-WRT fixes that up.