Knowledge Base

Cron tasks fails in the server behind NAT: curl error 7 failed to connect to example.com port 443 connection refused

Symptoms

Cron tasks fail with the following error messages:

curl error 7 failed to connect to example.com port 443 connection refused

Attempt to connect to the website fails. For instance, with the following command:

# wget http://www.example/
–2020-07-07 07:17:07– http://www.example/
Resolving www.example.com (www.example.com)… 127.0.0.1
Connecting to www.example.com (www.example.com)|127.0.0.1|:443… failed: Connection refused.
On the network interface, the internal 192.0.2.2 IP address is used and the domain example.com resolves to external 203.0.113.2 IP address

Cause

Incorrect NAT configuration.

Resolution

Contact the hosting provider responsible for network/NAT configuration and report the issue to them to make it possible to connect to websites’ own public IP from the server itself.

Workaround

Modify the /etc/hosts file:

Connect to the server via SSH
Make a backup of the /etc/hosts file:

# cp -a /etc/hosts{,.bak}
Edit file and add the following record:
```
192.0.2.2 www.example.com example.com
```