Are you stuck with the OpenVAS web interface not working?

Even being a fully-featured vulnerability scanner, OpenVAS often throws troublesome errors.

At Bobcares, we often receive requests to fix this error as part of our Server Management Services.

Today, let’s have a deep look at how our Support Engineers fix this error for our customers.

About OpenVAS

Before getting into the error, let’s have a look at OpenVAS.

As we all know, server security is an important factor that we cannot avoid.

Usually, while using any internet service we used to ensure that it is not vulnerable to known threats.

And, Open Vulnerability Assessment System or OpenVAS is one of the best vulnerability scanner available to protect the systems.

It contains a set of tools and services to conduct security checks and tests for maintaining the servers secure.

How we fix the OpenVAS web interface not working?

Recently, one of our customers approached us with an OpenVAS error.

He tried to connect to his OpenVAS from the internet but found errors that it doesn’t listen permanently on the external interface.

And, openvas-start causes it to listen on 127.0.0.1. Our Support Engineers checked the error in detail.

So, in order to resolve this error, we need to modify three files. For that, we move to the cd /lib/systemd/system.

The three .service files include greenbone-security-assistant.service, openvas-manager.service and openvas-scanner.service.

We use the sed command to make it listen properly on the preferred IP address. So, to make all services available on all interfaces, we use the command,

sed -e 's/127.0.0.1/preferredIPaddress/g' greenbone-security-assistant.service openvas-manager.service openvas-scanner.service -i

Finally, we reload the daemons using the below commands,

Also, we use the below command to make sure that all the services are listening to the desired host.

ss -nalt

This will resolve the error easily.

[Need more assistance to fix this error?- We’re available 24/7.]

Conclusion

In short, we can resolve the OpenVAS web interface not working using the sed( Stream Editor) command to replace 127.0.0.1 to the preferred IP address. In today’s writeup, we discussed how our Support Engineers fix this error easily for our customers.