Troubleshooting

pyngrok is a Python wrapper for ngrok, so often errors that occur (especially during startup) are a result of a ngrok configuration error and not a bug in pyngrok. Hopefully this page can give you some useful tips to debug these issues.

Test on the Command Line

When you install pyngrok with pip install pyngrok, ngrok should available from the command line. First ensure this is true by checking to see if pyngrok’s version of ngrok is properly setup in your path. Running ngrok with no args from the command line should show pyngrok version at the very end.

bash-3.2$ ngrok
NAME:
   ngrok - tunnel local ports to public URLs and inspect traffic

...

PYNGROK VERSION:
   5.0.0

Note

If PYNGROK VERSION is not seen in the output here, something else is managing ngrok (perhaps another ngrok wrapper installed through Homebrew or npm). If you’d prefer pyngrok manage ngrok for you, you’ll first need to reorder things in your $PATH to fix this, then you can continue troubleshooting on the command line.

With PYNGROK VERSION shown in your output here, you know things are setup properly. Next try starting ngrok headless:

bash-3.2$ ngrok start --none --log stdout

If that works, try starting a simple HTTP tunnel:

bash-3.2$ ngrok http 5000 --log stdout

If neither of these work, the logs should be dumped to the console for you to troubleshoot ngrok directly. If both of these work, you know pyngrok is properly installed on your system and able to access the ngrok binary, meaning the problem is likely a configuration issue in your Python application.

Enable Logging to the Console

Printing logs to the console can be a quick way to debug common issues by surfacing their root cause. To do this, ensure you have a handler streaming logs and your level is set to DEBUG. Here is a simple example:

import logging

from pyngrok import ngrok

# Setup a logger
logger = logging.getLogger()
logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
handler = logging.StreamHandler()
handler.setFormatter(logging.Formatter("%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s"))
logger.addHandler(handler)

# Then call the pyngrok method throwing the error, for example
ngrok.connect(5000)

Programmatically Inspect the Logs

ngrok logs are parsed by the NgrokProcess, and you can inspect them by iterating over its logs variable or giving it a log_event_callback.

If you’re seeing the NgrokProcess fail with a PyngrokNgrokError exception, these logs are also available on the exception itself. Catch the exception and inspect ngrok_logs and ngrok_error for more insight in to where ngrok is failing.

Test in the Python Console

Try to execute the same code that is giving you an error from the Python console instead. Be sure to pair this with enabling logging (as illustrated in the section above) so you can see where things are going wrong.

bash-3.2$ python
Python 3.7.6 (default, Dec 30 2019, 19:38:28)
[Clang 11.0.0 (clang-1100.0.33.16)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import logging
>>> from pyngrok import ngrok
>>> logger = logging.getLogger()
>>> logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
>>> handler = logging.StreamHandler()
>>> handler.setFormatter(logging.Formatter("%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s"))
>>> logger.addHandler(handler)
>>> ngrok.connect()
2020-10-08 22:36:59,533 - pyngrok.ngrok - INFO - Opening tunnel named: http-80-2c872002-24f6-4fe4-b6ec-3af273f45d1d
2020-10-08 22:36:59,543 - pyngrok.process - DEBUG - ngrok process starting with PID: 8241
2020-10-08 22:36:59,568 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:36:59-0700 lvl=info msg="no configuration paths supplied"
2020-10-08 22:36:59,569 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:36:59-0700 lvl=info msg="using configuration at default config path" path=/Users/<username>/.ngrok2/ngrok.yml
2020-10-08 22:36:59,570 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:36:59-0700 lvl=info msg="open config file" path=/Users/<username>/.ngrok2/ngrok.yml err=nil
2020-10-08 22:36:59,572 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:36:59-0700 lvl=info msg="starting web service" obj=web addr=127.0.0.1:4040
2020-10-08 22:37:00,036 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:37:00-0700 lvl=info msg="tunnel session started" obj=tunnels.session
2020-10-08 22:37:00,036 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:37:00-0700 lvl=info msg="client session established" obj=csess id=af124e14bcf6
2020-10-08 22:37:00,048 - pyngrok.process - DEBUG - ngrok process has started with API URL: http://127.0.0.1:4040
2020-10-08 22:37:00,048 - pyngrok.process - DEBUG - Monitor thread will be started
2020-10-08 22:37:00,049 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:37:00-0700 lvl=info msg=start pg=/api/tunnels id=ae13ec9c8181c47b
2020-10-08 22:37:00,049 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:37:00-0700 lvl=info msg=end pg=/api/tunnels id=ae13ec9c8181c47b status=200 dur=295.273µs
2020-10-08 22:37:00,050 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:37:00-0700 lvl=info msg=start pg=/api/tunnels id=0d996b4b278c5b35
2020-10-08 22:37:00,050 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:37:00-0700 lvl=info msg=end pg=/api/tunnels id=0d996b4b278c5b35 status=200 dur=87.721µs
2020-10-08 22:37:00,050 - pyngrok.ngrok - DEBUG - Creating tunnel with options: {'name': 'http-80-2c872002-24f6-4fe4-b6ec-3af273f45d1d', 'addr': '80', 'proto': 'http'}
2020-10-08 22:37:00,051 - pyngrok.ngrok - DEBUG - Making POST request to http://127.0.0.1:4040/api/tunnels with data: b'{"name": "http-80-2c872002-24f6-4fe4-b6ec-3af273f45d1d", "addr": "80", "proto": "http"}'
2020-10-08 22:37:00,052 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:37:00-0700 lvl=info msg=start pg=/api/tunnels id=0576c6624325620b
2020-10-08 22:37:00,270 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:37:00-0700 lvl=info msg="started tunnel" obj=tunnels name="http-80-2c872002-24f6-4fe4-b6ec-3af273f45d1d (http)" addr=http://localhost:80 url=http://<public_sub>.ngrok.io
2020-10-08 22:37:00,271 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:37:00-0700 lvl=info msg="started tunnel" obj=tunnels name=http-80-2c872002-24f6-4fe4-b6ec-3af273f45d1d addr=http://localhost:80 url=https://<public_sub>.ngrok.io
2020-10-08 22:37:00,272 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:37:00-0700 lvl=info msg=end pg=/api/tunnels id=0576c6624325620b status=201 dur=217.126877ms
2020-10-08 22:37:00,272 - pyngrok.ngrok - DEBUG - Response 201: {"name":"http-80-2c872002-24f6-4fe4-b6ec-3af273f45d1d","uri":"/api/tunnels/http-80-2c872002-24f6-4fe4-b6ec-3af273f45d1d","public_url":"https://<public_sub>.ngrok.io","proto":"https","config":{"addr":"http://localhost:80","inspect":true},"metrics":{"conns":{"count":0,"gauge":0,"rate1":0,"rate5":0,"rate15":0,"p50":0,"p90":0,"p95":0,"p99":0},"http":{"count":0,"rate1":0,"rate5":0,"rate15":0,"p50":0,"p90":0,"p95":0,"p99":0}}}
2020-10-08 22:37:00,273 - pyngrok.ngrok - DEBUG - Making GET request to http://127.0.0.1:4040/api/tunnels/http-80-2c872002-24f6-4fe4-b6ec-3af273f45d1d%20%28http%29 with data: None
2020-10-08 22:37:00,275 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:37:00-0700 lvl=info msg=start pg="/api/tunnels/http-80-2c872002-24f6-4fe4-b6ec-3af273f45d1d (http)" id=6b8012fded209914
2020-10-08 22:37:00,276 - pyngrok.process.ngrok - INFO - t=2020-10-08T22:37:00-0700 lvl=info msg=end pg="/api/tunnels/http-80-2c872002-24f6-4fe4-b6ec-3af273f45d1d (http)" id=6b8012fded209914 status=200 dur=246.304µs
2020-10-08 22:37:00,277 - pyngrok.ngrok - DEBUG - Response 200: {"name":"http-80-2c872002-24f6-4fe4-b6ec-3af273f45d1d (http)","uri":"/api/tunnels/http-80-2c872002-24f6-4fe4-b6ec-3af273f45d1d%20%28http%29","public_url":"http://<public_sub>.ngrok.io","proto":"http","config":{"addr":"http://localhost:80","inspect":true},"metrics":{"conns":{"count":0,"gauge":0,"rate1":0,"rate5":0,"rate15":0,"p50":0,"p90":0,"p95":0,"p99":0},"http":{"count":0,"rate1":0,"rate5":0,"rate15":0,"p50":0,"p90":0,"p95":0,"p99":0}}}
<NgrokTunnel: "http://<public_sub>.ngrok.io" -> "http://localhost:80">

Check the Inspector at http://localhost:4040

Check to see if you are able to access the traffic inspection interface via a web browser. If so, this at least means ngrok is able to start before throwing the error.

ngrok Documentation

Familiarize yourself with the ngrok documentation, especially the sections pertaining to the config file and the client API.