Trouble Connecting to self-hosted server with Desktop App?

Hello everyone,

I have been having quite a time with trying to set up and run a self-hosted instance of Bitwarden.

Have been trying and failing for more than a week now to make Docker happy with a windows server VM (apparently there’s some black magic involved with running containers on virtual machines?). So I decided to try and install Docker and the bitwarden server software on my PC to try and move things forward for testing purposes, and worry about the VM problem later.

I’ve done the organization setup steps, have installed docker on my machine, and have been able to start the server with the bitwarden powershell script… so far so good.

After that is where the trouble begins. I am unable to authenticate to the server from the desktop app, but the “Web Vault” works fine. When trying to login to the self-hosted organization from the desktop app, I get a red error notification that only says “Failed to fetch”. I can get to the “bitwarden.domain.com” webpage and sign in fine, and I can create secrets and share them with a link. However when I try to click the button to send the verification email I get the same error notification.

I’ve looked at the various log files and haven’t come up with anything useful except for one exception that is recorded in the “Identity” log… which is from a MailKit software component and the exception is for a “5.7.0 Local Policy Violation”. Now, Google says this error is related to an SPF violation but I don’t understand how this would be the case… I was under the impression that SPF rules are only applied to emails sending out of our domain to a different recipient domain, and not for anything internal. I am unsure where this error is originating from and also if it’s even related to the problem at hand, but it’s all I have to go on right now.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. We are on a trial license and although I’ve been told we can extend it I still want to have everything working properly ASAP so that we can evaluate the product

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Hi @dl_dl, you may be best served reaching out directly to our Support Team as they can typically resolve these types of issues the fastest. If you like, you can also private message me with your email address and I’d be happy to open up a ticket on your behalf. :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m meeting with an engineer from bitwarden today. I wanted to see if members of the community had similar experiences and could help with some advice.

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I have the same problem. Di you find a solution?