ANSWERED allowed_ips in MLDonkey

[kinsham 1]

MLDonkey requires me to set the variable "allowed_ips" in the config file "downloads.ini" to a set of alternative values for the ips that are allowed to connect externally such as the Web UI. My trouble is that I cannot know what ip AirVPN is providing as this varies with the current server selected.

The WebUI connects to port 4080 internally so I forwarded a port to 4080. When I check if it is open I get connection refused.

If I check open ports in the container shell using ss, I see that 0.0.0.0:4080 is listening so that seems OK.

Does anyone know how I should set allowed_ips?

I have tried "0.0.0.0", "current exit ip", "your VPN IP4" all to no avail, the forwarded port remains closed.

[kinsham 1]

Solved
I had two errors in my config.
1. The allowed_ips parameter should be set to add the ip of the connecting client. Nothing to do with VPN exit ip or VPN IP4. This is the ISP assigned WAN ip that mld http server sees. I have a static ip so that's OK but if the client ip is dynamic it wouldn't work. Not sure how to fix that.
2. The forwarded port must not be redirected to 4080. Set it x=>x and alter the http port in downloads.ini to be whatever forwarded port was selected. I still don't understand why a port redirection doesn’t work but there is a note to that effect in the forwarded ports page not to do that for p2p that I hadn't appreciated the significance of.