Reverse tunnel status verification ensures your UniFi controller remains accessible to Spotipo when you don't have a public IP address. If your captive portal suddenly stops working or the controller shows offline in Spotipo settings, the reverse tunnel service may have stopped—often after controller updates or reboots.
This guide shows you how to SSH into your UniFi controller, check the tunnel service status, and restart it if necessary.
What you'll accomplish:
SSH into your UniFi controller to check service status
Verify reverse tunnel service is running
Restart tunnel service if stopped
Confirm controller shows online in Spotipo
What you'll need:
SSH access to your UniFi controller
Root password for your controller
Reverse tunnel previously configured (following setup guide)
Check reverse tunnel status
To check if your ssh tunnel is active and running, you need to ssh into your UniFi Controller using command
ssh root@<UniFi controller's IP address>.
Log in using the password that you have set on your UniFi controller under SSH settings.
After you've logged in to your controller using ssh, check the status of tunnel service using command:
systemctl status spotipo-tunnel.service
(this is the name of the service if you've followed this article)
If the service is not available, using this same command would return a message similar to this.
This means that the service is probably stopped or it was turned off after an update and simply needs to be restarted. To do that, use these commands.
systemctl start spotipo-tunnel.service
systemctl enable spotipo-tunnel.service
When this is done, check the status of your service using the command:
systemctl status spotipo-tunnel.service again.
If your tunnel is now active, the message should now appear like in the picture below.
Verify the connection
After this is done, check that the status of UniFi controller in the Spotipo settings is Online.
Also check if captive portal is working properly after these changes.
Reverse Tunnel Verified
After checking and restarting the service if needed, your reverse tunnel should be active. Verify the controller shows "Online" in Spotipo settings and test that the captive portal works correctly.
What to do next:
Test captive portal by connecting a device to WiFi
Monitor controller status in Spotipo dashboard
Note that controller updates may stop the tunnel (requires restart)
Common causes of tunnel:
Controller firmware updates
Controller reboots
System service disabled after update
Preventive measure: Enable the service with systemctl enable to ensure it starts automatically after reboots.
Still showing offline after restarting service? Contact Spotipo support via live chat or email us at [email protected].