Wondering how to fix the GCP “Connection Refused” error? We can help you.

Often customers having VM instances on the Google cloud platform report to us that they receive a connection refused while trying to access the server via a browser.

Here at Bobcares, we handle requests from our customers to fix similar errors as a part of our Server Management Services.

Today we will see how our Support Engineers fix this for our customers.

How to fix GCP Connection Refused error

Before going into the steps for fixing this error we can see what causes this error.

Cause:

Following are some of the common causes:

1. Firewall rules or tags being misconfigured in one of the following ways:

• Not having a proper tag that allows Compute Engine to apply the appropriate firewall rules to the instance.
• Doesn’t have a firewall rule that allows traffic to the external IP address for the instance.

2. We might be trying to access the VM using an https address. The URL must be http://[EXTERNAL_IP] rather than https://[EXTERNAL_IP].

Steps to fix this error

Following are the steps that our Support Engineers do to fix this error:

For ensuring the VM instance has the correct tags we can do the following:

1. Firstly, from the Google Cloud Console, go to the VM instances page.

2. Then go to VM instances and select the instance we wish to connect to.

3. After that click Edit and select  Firewalls

4. From there we must ensure that the Allow HTTP traffic box is checked. If it is not checked, check it.

5. Finally we can save the changes.

For ensuring that a proper firewall rule exists we can do the following:

1. Firstly from the Google Cloud Console, go to the Firewall rules.

2. Here we need to look for a firewall rule that allows all IP ranges through tcp:80.

3. If we could not find the rule, we can create one by clicking Create firewall rule.

4. Then enter a name for the rule, such as default-allow-http.

5. In the Source IP ranges section, enter 0.0.0.0/0 to allow traffic from all sources.

6. And under Protocols and ports, check Specified protocols and ports and enter tcp:80.

7. After creating the firewall rule we can check whether the issue persists.

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Conclusion

To conclude, we saw the steps that our Support Techs follow to fix the GCP “Connection Refused” error.